The Adventures of Captain Horn Part 40

It took a good deal of time to bring the prisoner Banker to the station, and Professor Barre arrived there before him. The professor was amazed to find Captain Horn under arrest, and unable to give any reason for this state of things. But it was not long before the magistrate appeared, and it so happened that he was acquainted with Barre, who was a well-known man in Paris, and, after glancing at the captain, he addressed himself to the professor, speaking in French. The latter immediately inquired the nature of the charges against Captain Horn, using the same language.

"Ah! you know him?" said the magistrate. "He has been accused of being the leader of a band of outlaws--a man who has committed murders and outrages without number, one who should not be suffered to go at large, one who should be confined until the authorities of Peru, where his crimes were committed, have been notified."

The professor stared, but could not comprehend what he had heard.

"What is it?" inquired Captain Horn. "Can you not speak English?"

No, this Parisian magistrate could not speak English, but the professor explained the charge.

"It is the greatest absurdity!" exclaimed the captain. "Ralph told me that a man, evidently once one of that band of outlaws in Peru, had been arrested for a.s.saulting Cheditafa, and this charge must be part of his scheme of vengeance for that arrest. I could instantly prove everything that is necessary to know about me if my banker, Mr. Wraxton, were here.

I have sent for him, but he has not come. I have not a moment to waste discussing this matter." The captain gazed anxiously toward the door, and for a few moments the three men stood in silence.

The situation was a peculiar one. The professor thought of sending to the Hotel Grenade, but he hesitated. He said to himself: "The lady's testimony would be of no avail. If he is the man the bandit says he is, of course she does not know it. His conduct has been very strange, and for a long time she certainly knew very little about him. I don't see how even his banker could become surety for him if he were here, and he doesn't seem inclined to come. Anybody may have a bank-account."

The professor stood looking on the ground. The captain looked at him, and, by that power to read the thoughts of others which an important emergency often gives to a man, he read, or believed he did, the thoughts of Barre. He did not blame the man for his doubts. Any one might have such doubts. A stranger coming to France with a cargo of gold must expect suspicion, and here was more--a definite charge.

At this moment there came a message from the banking house: Mr. Wraxton had gone to Brussels that morning. Fuguet did not live in Paris, and the captain had never seen him. There were clerks whom he had met in Ma.r.s.eilles, but, of course, they could only say that he was the man known as Captain Horn.

The captain ground his teeth, and then, suddenly turning, he interrupted the conversation between the magistrate and Barre. He addressed the latter and asked, "Will you tell me what this officer has been saying about me?"

"He says," answered Barre, "that he believes you know n.o.body in Paris except the party at the Hotel Grenade, and that, of course, you may have deceived them in regard to your ident.i.ty--that they have been here a long time, and you have been absent, and you have not been referred to by them, which seems strange."

"Has he not found out that Wraxton knows me?"

"He says," answered Barre, "that you have not visited that banking house since you came to Paris, and that seems strange also. Every traveller goes to his banker as soon as he arrives."

"I did not need to go there," said the captain. "I was occupied with other matters. I had just met my wife after a long absence."

"I don't wonder," said the professor, bowing, "that your time was occupied. It is very unfortunate that your banker cannot come to you or send."

The captain did not answer. This professor doubted him, and why should he not? As the captain considered the case, it grew more and more serious.

That his marriage should be delayed on account of such a preposterous and outrageous charge against him was bad enough. It would be a terrible blow to Edna. For, although he knew that she would believe in him, she could not deny, if she were questioned, that in this age of mail and telegraph facilities she had not heard from him for nearly a year, and it would be hard for her to prove that he had not deceived her. But the most unfortunate thing of all was the meeting with the London lawyers the next day. These men were engaged in settling a very important question regarding the owners.h.i.+p of the treasure he had brought to France, and his claims upon it, and if they should hear that he had been charged with being the captain of a band of murderers and robbers, they might well have their suspicions of the truth of his story of the treasure. In fact, everything might be lost, and the affair might end by his being sent a prisoner to Peru, to have the case investigated there. What might happen then was too terrible to think of. He turned abruptly to the professor.

"I see that you don't believe in me," he said, "but I see that you are a man, and I believe in you. You are acquainted with this magistrate. Use your influence with him to have this matter settled quickly. Do as much as that for me."

"What is it that you ask me to do?" said the other.

"It is this," replied the captain. "I have never seen this man who says he was a member of the Rackbirds' band. In fact, I never saw any of those wretches except dead ones. He has never met me. He knows nothing about me. His charge is simply a piece of revenge. The only connection he can make between me and the Rackbirds is that he knew two negroes were once the servants of his band, and that they are now the servants of my wife.

Having never seen me, he cannot know me. Please ask the magistrate to send for some other men in plain clothes to come into this room, and then let the prisoner be brought here, and asked to point out the man he charges with the crime of being the captain of the Rackbirds."

The professor's face brightened, and without answer he turned to the magistrate, and laid this proposition before him. The officer shook his head. This would be a very irregular method of procedure. There were formalities which should not be set aside. The deposition of Banker should be taken before witnesses. But the professor was interested in Captain Horn's proposed plan. In an emergency of the sort, when time was so valuable, he thought it should be tried before anything else was done.

He talked very earnestly to the magistrate, who at last yielded.

In a few minutes three respectable men were brought in from outside, and then a policeman was sent for Banker.

When that individual entered the waiting-room, his eyes ran rapidly over the company a.s.sembled there. After the first glance, he believed that he had never seen one of them before. But he said nothing; he waited to hear what would be said to him. This was said quickly. Banker spoke French, and the magistrate addressed him directly.

"In this room," he said, "stands the man you have accused as a robber and a murderer, as the captain of the band to which you admit you once belonged. Point him out immediately."

Banker's heart was not in the habit of sinking, but it went down a little now. Could it be possible that any one there had ever led him to deeds of violence and blood? He looked again at each man in the room, very carefully this time. Of course, that rascal Raminez would not come to Paris without disguising himself, and no disguise could be so effectual as the garb of a gentleman. But if Raminez were there, he should not escape him by any such tricks. Banker half shut his eyes, and again went over every countenance. Suddenly he smiled.

"My captain," he said presently, "is not dressed exactly as he was when I last saw him. He is in good clothes now, and that made it a little hard for me to recognize him at first. But there is no mistaking his nose and his eyebrows. I know him as well as if we had been drinking together last night. There he stands!" And, with his right arm stretched out, he pointed directly to Professor Barre.

At these words there was a general start, and the face of the magistrate grew scarlet with anger. As for the professor himself, he knit his brows, and looked at Banker in amazement.

"You scoundrel! You liar! You beast!" cried the officer. "To accuse this well-known and honorable gentleman, and say that he is a leader of a band of robbers! You are an impostor, a villain, and if you had been confronted with this other gentleman alone, you would have sworn that he was a bandit chief!"

Banker made no answer, but still kept his eyes fixed upon the professor.

Now Captain Horn spoke: "That fellow had to say something, and he made a very wild guess of it," he said to Barre. "I think the matter may now be considered settled. Will you suggest as much to the magistrate? Truly, I have not a moment to spare."

Banker listened attentively to these words, and his eyes sparkled.

"You needn't try any of your tricks on me, you scoundrel Raminez," he said, shaking his fist at the professor. "I know you. I know you better than I did when I first spoke. If you wanted to escape me, you ought to have shaved off your eyebrows when you trimmed your hair and your beard. But I will be after you yet. The tales you have told here won't help you."

"Take him away!" shouted the magistrate. "He is a fiend!"

Banker was hurried from the room by two policemen.

To the profuse apologies of the magistrate Captain Horn had no time to listen; he accepted what he heard of them as a matter of course, and only remarked that, as he was not the man against whom the charges had been brought, he must hurry away to attend to a most important appointment.

The professor went with him into the street.

"Sir," said the captain, addressing Barre, "you have been of the most important service to me, and I heartily acknowledge the obligation. Had it not been that you were good enough to exert your influence with the magistrate, that rascal would have sworn through thick and thin that I had been his captain."

Then, looking at his watch, he said, "It is twenty-five minutes to four.

I shall take a cab and go directly to the legation. I was on my way to my hotel, but there is no time for that now," and, after shaking hands with the professor, he hailed a cab.

Captain Horn reached the legation but a little while after the party from the Hotel Grenade had arrived, and in due time he stood up beside Edna in one of the parlors of the mansion, and he and she were united in marriage by the American minister. The services were very simple, but the congratulations of the little company a.s.sembled could not have been more earnest and heartfelt.

"Now," said Mrs. Cliff, in the ear of Edna, "if we knew that that gold was all to be sunk in the ocean to-morrow, we still ought to be the happiest people on earth."

She was a true woman, Mrs. Cliff, and at that moment she meant what she said.

It had been arranged that the whole party should return to the Hotel Grenade, and from there the newly married couple should start for the train which would take them to Calais; and, as he left the legation promptly, the captain had time to send to his own hotel for his effects.

The direct transition from the police station to the bridal altar had interfered with his ante-hymeneal preparations, but the captain was accustomed to interference with preparations, and had long learned to dispense with them when occasion required.

"I don't believe," said the minister's wife to her husband, when the bridal party had left, "that you ever before married such a handsome couple."

"The fact is," said he, "that I never before saw standing together such a fine specimen of a man and such a beautiful, glowing, radiant woman."

"I don't see why you need say that," said she, quickly. "You and I stood up together."

"Yes," he replied, with a smile, "but I wasn't a spectator."

CHAPTER LI

BANKER DOES SOME IMPORTANT BUSINESS