Cupid's Middleman Part 17

It was an unfortunate day for Mr. Tescheron and his family when I isolated him among the scheming natives of Hoboken, that seat of wonderful mechanical learning. When the birds had been s.h.i.+pped to Stukeville, Mrs. Tescheron insisted that the family return home at once, and, if necessary, take the consequences of a terrible publicity. Life without her friends had become unbearable. She must have the comforts of her home. Daily she begged, implored, teased and pined. Gabrielle, too, urged her father to consider her mother's health, for Hoboken had gotten upon Mrs. Tescheron's nerves to a dangerous degree.

"I care nothing now for the publicity," said Mrs. Tescheron. "It cannot be worse than this sort of privacy. Albert, I hope you will see the folly of remaining longer."

"Mr. Smith tells me it would not be safe to return yet, Marie. Be patient; in a little while everything will have blown over. Remember, we are paying Mr. Smith, who is experienced in these matters, and it is good business to take his advice."

Gabrielle remained silent during the conversation between her father and mother. She had, as usual, spent the best part of the day attending her hero at the hospital, protecting him from the consequences of her foolish father's acts and from his traitorous chum. Her plans were carrying well, and were it not for her mother's fretfulness Hoboken or any spot within a reasonable distance from the hospital would be a satisfactory abiding place for her.

Gabrielle's disinterestedness had already aroused her father's suspicion.

"You seem to be satisfied here, Gabrielle," said he, turning to his daughter, whose air of contentment seemed to him to be based on something more than a sustaining faith in Jim Hosley; it must, he thought, include a full knowledge of Jim's retreat. That night she seemed to be most aggravatingly self-satisfied, although she had really never been otherwise from the moment of his first denunciation of Jim, closely followed by the family's flight. This must be something more than stoicism. She had outgeneraled him in some way.

"Yes, I am perfectly satisfied, father," replied Gabrielle. "Mother, however, needs her home. The days drag heavily here. A few weeks' change was well enough, and I believe it might have helped her; but you can see that she is worrying a great deal now. Is it worth while, do you think, to sacrifice mother's comfort, perhaps her health?"

"These rooms are not to my liking so well as those in Ninety-sixth Street, but Mr. King wrote to me again the other day that the same fellow was around again to serve me with that subpoena. Hoboken may not be so desirable as home, but I think you would both be sorry to return and undergo the ordeal we have been delivered from by coming here. I am trying a little plan now which, if it works, may bring us home soon. I think it is the safe way out. Mr. Smith and I are now at work on it. If all goes well, Marie, you will be happily returned to your home very soon, so please be as patient as you can a few days longer. This miserable incident will then be closed forever, and we may walk abroad again among our friends, with our reputations unsullied and no one the wiser for our leaving as we did. Ah! it will please me, mother, to have it so."

"Indeed, it will please us all, Albert," Mrs. Tescheron a.s.sured him sadly, although it seemed to her there could be nothing more disappointing than an indefinite postponement of her heart's desire.

What those plans were Gabrielle would have given Smith a retainer to know, for if they involved the arrest of her Jim and his extradition to another State. She wondered how her father could believe they would get away safely in a week. If the detectives had lost track of the fugitive during the time he was in the hospital she did not believe they would find him now in the hiding-place she had in mind. The moment the hospital physicians consented, Jim Hosley would be removed to a spot where he might convalesce without fear of molestation. Not a soul, not even her mother, should know of that place, for if the pursuit was to be renewed in earnest, her vigilance must be all the greater.

Gabrielle's fears, as is usually the case with lovers whose wisdom is intuitional, were not well founded. The detectives had long ago ceased to do any actual work in following clues to determine the whereabouts of the bad man. Why should they? Their idea was to keep him mysteriously at large, with the district attorney and police always just around the corner. Suspended interest pays well, for the service was charged at so much per week with occasionally a bonus for an "extra."

Mr. Tescheron did not have in mind a further pursuit of Hosley after he had paid the detective bureau for weeks of service, which brought no results other than rumors. To have the disturber of his peace in hiding where no man could find him would have pleased Mr. Tescheron; but from the reports of Smith it seemed certain that a crisis was about to be reached. Hosley had been located in South Dakota, claiming a residence antedating our fire by several weeks. A man who has had trouble with his wives generally goes there. The officials were about to send men on to arrest him, and then await his extradition. There was enough evidence, Mr. Smith said, in the Browning case alone to warrant the belief that the authorities would readily secure the transfer of their man to New York; but long before that time, all the horrible details would appear in the papers.

"We have staved this thing off for five weeks, Mr. Tescheron," said Mr.

Smith, in one of his private interviews with his client at the Stuffer House. They sat that afternoon in a corner of the writing-room adjoining the large living-room.

"Yes, I think you have done well," replied Mr. Tescheron. "But how much have I paid you altogether? About one thousand eight hundred dollars, isn't it?"

"Yes, or a trifle more or less, one way or the other. I can't remember just now. It has involved me in heavy expense, this case has, Mr.

Tescheron. If I had it to do over again, I could not possibly quote such favorable terms for our facilities--I could not possibly. No, sir, I could not possibly think of doing so." Mr. Smith's emphasis took the form of dwindling repet.i.tion so common to men of business, who have hold of the best end of the bargain, and have decided to keep their hold.

"Well, in the fish business, one thousand eight hundred dollars stands for enough to feed ten thousand people," remarked Mr. Tescheron, glumly.

"I feel as if it ought to pay for a lot of detective work. I am sorry you think you are so underpaid."

There was a trace of a sneer that Mr. Smith did not like, and as he held the upper hand in the detective business he did not need to tolerate such conduct in his client.

"Perhaps we'd better call the thing off," said Mr. Smith. "You and your family remain here--or you might go down to Lakewood. In that way you will escape much of the disagreeable notoriety--quite a good deal of it, at any rate. Yes, sir, a considerable amount of it."

Mr. Smith snapped some doc.u.mentary-looking papers, and as he drew his lips together and nervously twisted his head, he thrust the papers deep in an inside pocket. They contained a memorandum of the estimated price for engineering the return of the Tescheron family to New York under an iron-clad guarantee of protection.

But the sarcasm was more of an irritant than the client could stand.

"See here, Smith, you talk to me in a way I don't like"; and Mr.

Tescheron glared as he became more combative than he had ever been in his dealings with this prosperous leech. "I don't care to have you threaten me in this underhanded manner. Perhaps I have been a fool to have placed so much confidence in you from the start. You have kept me scared and away from my home for five weeks, and now you hint that the end is not in sight. We are all sick and tired of this place. Hoboken is no paradise, let me tell you. I am bored to death here. For the money paid to you to date, you have produced nothing but discomfort. I am thinking of packing up and starting back to-morrow, let the consequences be what they may. I think I have been a victim quite long enough, and have paid just about all a fool ought to pay for a vacation of five weeks."

"Well, you know your own business best, of course, Mr. Tescheron. If you really don't fear the publicity, why did you engage me at all? Why did you go to any expense whatever? Of course, it is foolish, as you say, to spend money to avoid that which you do not fear. Go back and take your medicine; let your wife and daughter take theirs. Go back by all means; start to-morrow. Don't delay."

That fellow Smith certainly knew enough about fis.h.i.+ng for men to fill a volume with pointers on the best lines, rods, and bait--artificial, worms or minnows. He knew just what he could do with a man restrained by fear, and filled with the idea that his money and superior business judgment would enable him to gain his ends in every emergency. A poor man is protected against many parasites by his lean purse. It gets back to the saying, "A fool and his money are soon parted"; but what impresses me at this turn of our narrative is the fact that the fool is only interesting up to the point of the parting. After that he is dropped from the plans of his pursuers. Notice of the failure of Mr.

Tescheron's business in the reports of the day would have removed him from the realm of mystery to sure footing on the hard-pan of tough luck.

Mr. Tescheron had in his haste begun to find fault before he knew just what move to make. He realized that Smith read that fact in his manner and peevish complaining. He felt the hook in his gills. Smith felt the tug on the line. Perhaps at that interview he thought how like my advice this sarcastic statement from Smith seemed. At times he felt like a coward, and then encouraged himself to believe he was really a brave man, _saving_ his loved ones from the blasting breath of scandal more awful than any calamity that might overtake them.

Smith's shrewd little brain turned on cash. Gold dollars were the ball bearings that eased its frictionless revolutions. Pine forests have their charms, no doubt, for those misguided creatures who enjoy the bracing ozone of the balsam-laden air. To Smith the pungent sap of the evergreen tree was a poor subst.i.tute for the stimulating essence of greenback, the cologne of greasy bills, and it would take a big pile of them to make the room "stuffy" enough to have him raise the window. When it came to drawing nigh to money, Mr. Smith was the pink of propinquity.

Noting that Mr. Tescheron had been subdued, Mr. Smith started to go. He bade his patron to be of good cheer, and promised him the outlook would surely brighten in time.

"Keep your seat a minute, Smith," urged Mr. Tescheron, whose ideas had been strengthened by the tonic of Smith's stimulating rejoinder, and I may add that the turn was about what Smith had planned to happen. "What are those papers you put back in your pocket?" The observing, gullible man of business was trying to swim where the current was a little too swift for him.

"Why, I had here a memorandum of what it would cost to have you go back and have the whole business hushed up forever."

"How much?"

"Three thousand dollars."

"Whew! That's a scorcher."

"Flanagan wanted six, but I got next to him myself and I think--I'm not sure--but I think he would take three."

"I can't think of it. I'll give a thousand, but not a cent more. And say--how much do you keep out of it, Smith?"

Mr. Tescheron cast a suspicious eye on the detective, who proceeded to apply his formula for suspicion.

"That is an insult, Mr. Tescheron," exclaimed Mr. Smith. "You may not have intended it as such, but really that is too much for me to bear. I have served you untiringly and faithfully, and really you should give me better treatment. I cannot allow you to insinuate that I would be guilty of--"

"There, there, Smith, forget it. I shouldn't have accused you of that.

But this expense is too heavy. I'll stay here a while longer. As there seems to be no danger of the case being revived, I think we may return in a week or so without paying the hush money."

"Just as you say, but I confess the newspaper reports have scared me, even though you--"

"The reports!" Tescheron colored and blanched in turn. "The reports!

Where?"

"You saw them."

"Certainly I did not. Where did they appear? When? Why have you not told me?"

"But you read the papers, and I understood you did not fear them while over here."

"Fear them! What am I here for except to escape the scandal that would attach to my family? Smith, are you lying to me? There were no reports.

Had there been I could not have missed them; my man King or some one would have called my attention to them."

Mr. Smith handed a carefully folded newspaper clipping, with ragged edges, to Mr. Tescheron. It had the appearance of being hastily torn from a paper. Mr. Tescheron read it slowly, and as he did so Smith watched the victim writhe as the prepared venom paralyzed it for the death-blow. I have seen this clipping. It read as follows:

MURDER HIDDEN BY THE POLICE.

MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF A WOMAN NOT REPORTED FOR SIX WEEKS.