The Window at the White Cat, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  UNEASY APPREHENSIONS

  Plattsburg was not the name of the capital, but it will do for thisstory. The state doesn't matter either. You may take your choice, likethe story Mark Twain wrote, with all kinds of weather at the beginning,so the reader could take his pick.

  We will say that my home city is Manchester. I live with my marriedbrother, his wife and two boys. Fred is older than I am, and he is anexceptional brother. On the day he came home from his wedding trip, Iwent down with my traps on a hansom, in accordance with a prearrangedschedule. Fred and Edith met me inside the door.

  "Here's your latch-key, Jack," Fred said, as he shook hands. "Only onestipulation--remember we are strangers in the vicinity and try to gethome before the neighbors are up. We have our reputations to think of."

  "There is no hour for breakfast," Edith said, as she kissed me. "Youhave a bath of your own, and don't smoke in the drawing-room."

  Fred was always a lucky devil.

  I had been there now for six years. I had helped to raise two youngKnoxes--bully youngsters, too: the oldest one could use boxing-gloveswhen he was four--and the finest collie pup in our end of the state. Iwanted to raise other things--the boys liked pets--but Edith was likeall women, she didn't care for animals.

  I had a rabbit-hutch built and stocked in the laundry, and a dove-coteon the roof. I used the general bath, and gave up my tub to a youngalligator I got in Florida, and every Sunday the youngsters and I had agreat time trying to teach it to do tricks. I have always taken it alittle hard that Edith took advantage of my getting the measles fromBilly, to clear out every animal in the house. She broke the news to megently, the day the rash began to fade, maintaining that, having lostone cook through the alligator escaping from his tub and being mistaken,in the gloom of the back-stairs, for a rubber boot, and picked up underthe same misapprehension, she could not risk another cook.

  On the day that Margery Fleming came to me about her father, I went homein a state of mixed emotion. Dinner was not a quiet meal: Fred and Italked politics, generally, and as Fred was on one side and I on theother there was always an argument on.

  "What about Fleming?" I asked at last, when Fred had declared that inthese days of corruption, no matter what the government was, he was"forninst" it. "Hasn't he been frightened into reform?"

  "Bad egg," he said, jabbing his potato as if it had been a politician,"and there's no way to improve a bad egg except to hold your nose.That's what the public is doing; holding its nose."

  "Hasn't he a daughter?" I asked casually.

  "Yes--a lovely girl, too," Edith assented. "It is his only redeemingquality."

  "Fleming is a rascal, daughter or no daughter," Fred persisted. "Eversince he and his gang got poor Butler into trouble and then left him tokill himself as the only way out, I have felt that there was somethingcoming to all of them--Hansen, Schwartz and the rest. I saw Fleming onthe street to-day."

  "What!" I exclaimed, almost jumping out of my chair.

  Fred surveyed me quizzically over his coffee cup.

  "'Hasn't he a daughter!'" he quoted. "Yes, I saw him, Jack, this veryday, in an unromantic four-wheeler, and he was swearing at a policeman."

  "Where was it?"

  "Chestnut and Union. His cab had been struck by a car, and badlydamaged, but the gentleman refused to get out. No doubt you could getthe details from the corner-man."

  "Look here, Fred," I said earnestly. "Keep that to yourself, will you?And you too, Edith? It's a queer story, and I'll tell you sometime."

  As we left the dining-room Edith put her hand on my shoulder.

  "Don't get mixed up with those people, Jack," she advised. "Margery's adear girl, but her father practically killed Henry Butler, and HenryButler married my cousin."

  "You needn't make it a family affair," I protested. "I have only seenthe girl once."

  But Edith smiled. "I know what I know," she said. "How extravagant ofyou to send Bobby that enormous hobby-horse!"

  "The boy has to learn to ride sometime. In four years he can have apony, and I'm going to see that he has it. He'll be eight by that time."

  Edith laughed.

  "In four years!" she said, "Why, in four years you'll--" then shestopped.

  "I'll what?" I demanded, blocking the door to the library.

  "You'll be forty, Jack, and it's a mighty unattractive man who gets pastforty without being sought and won by some woman. You'll be buying--"

  "I will be thirty-nine," I said with dignity, "and as far as beingsought and won goes, I am so overwhelmed by Fred's misery that I don'tintend to marry at all. If I do--_if I do_--it will be to some girl whoturns and runs the other way every time she sees me."

  "The oldest trick in the box," Edith scoffed. "What's that thing Fred'salways quoting: 'A woman is like a shadow; follow her, she flies; flyfrom her, she follows.'"

  "Upon my word!" I said indignantly. "And you are a woman!"

  "I'm different," she retorted. "I'm only a wife and mother."

  In the library Fred got up from his desk and gathered up his papers. "Ican't think with you two whispering there," he said, "I'm going to theden."

  As he slammed the door into his workroom Edith picked up her skirts andscuttled after him.

  "How dare you run away like that?" she called. "You promised me--" Thedoor closed behind her.

  I went over and spoke through the panels.

  "'Follow her, she flies; fly from her, she follows'--oh, wife andmother!" I called.

  "For Heaven's sake, Edith," Fred's voice rose irritably. "If you andJack are going to talk all evening, go and sit on _his_ knee and let mealone. The way you two flirt under my nose is a scandal. Do you hearthat, Jack?"

  "Good night, Edith," I called, "I have left you a kiss on the upper lefthand panel of the door. And I want to ask you one more question: what ifI fly from the woman and she doesn't follow?"

  "Thank your lucky stars," Fred called in a muffled voice, and I leftthem to themselves.

  I had some work to do at the office, work that the interview with Hunterhad interrupted, and half past eight that night found me at my desk. Butmy mind strayed from the papers before me. After a useless effort toconcentrate, I gave it up as useless, and by ten o'clock I was on thestreet again, my evening wasted, the papers in the libel case of the_Star_ against the _Eagle_ untouched on my desk, and I the victim of anuneasy apprehension that took me, almost without volition, to theneighborhood of the Fleming house on Monmouth Avenue. For it hadoccurred to me that Miss Fleming might not have left the house that dayas she had promised, might still be there, liable to another intrusionby the mysterious individual who had a key to the house.

  It was a relief, consequently, when I reached its corner, to find nolights in the building. The girl had kept her word. Assured of that, Ilooked at the house curiously. It was one of the largest in the city,not wide, but running far back along the side street; a small yard witha low iron fence and a garage, completed the property. The street lightsleft the back of the house in shadow, and as I stopped in the shelter ofthe garage, I was positive that I heard some one working with a rearwindow of the empty house. A moment later the sounds ceased and muffledfootsteps came down the cement walk. The intruder made no attempt toopen the iron gate; against the light I saw him put a leg over the lowfence, follow it up with the other, and start up the street, still withpeculiar noiselessness of stride. He was a short, heavy-shoulderedfellow in a cap, and his silhouette showed a prodigious length of arm.

  I followed, I don't mind saying in some excitement. I had a vision ofgrabbing him from behind and leading him--or pushing him, under thecircumstances, in triumph to the police station, and another mentalpicture, not so pleasant, of being found on the pavement by somepasser-by, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life. ButI was not apprehensive. I even remember wondering humorously if I shouldovertake him and press the cold end of my silver mounted fountain peninto the nape of his neck, if he would throw up his hands and su
rrender.I had read somewhere of a burglar held up in a similar way with ashoe-horn.

  Our pace was easy. Once the man just ahead stopped and lighted acigarette, and the odor of a very fair Turkish tobacco came back to me.He glanced back over his shoulder at me and went on without quickeninghis pace. We met no policemen, and after perhaps five minutes walking,when the strain was growing tense, my gentleman of the rubber-soledshoes swung abruptly to the left, and--entered the police station!

  I had occasion to see Davidson many times after that, during the strangedevelopment of the Fleming case; I had the peculiar experience later ofhaving him follow me as I had trailed him that night, and I had occasiononce to test the strength of his long arms when he helped to thrust methrough the transom at the White Cat, but I never met him without arecurrence of the sheepish feeling with which I watched him swagger upto the night sergeant and fall into easy conversation with the manbehind the desk. Standing in the glare from the open window, I had muchthe lost pride and self contempt of a wet cat sitting in the sun.

  Two or three roundsmen were sitting against the wall, lazily, helmetsoff and coats open against the warmth of the early spring night. In aback room others were playing checkers and disputing noisily. Davidson'svoice came distinctly through the open windows.

  "The house is closed," he reported. "But one of the basement windowsisn't shuttered and the lock is bad. I couldn't find Shields. He'dbetter keep an eye on it." He stopped and fished in his pockets with agrin. "This was tied to the knob of the kitchen door," he said, raisinghis voice for the benefit of the room, and holding aloft a piece ofpaper. "For Shields!" he explained, "and signed 'Delia.'"

  The men gathered around him, even the sergeant got up and leanedforward, his elbows on his desk.

  "Read it," he said lazily. "Shields has got a wife; and her name ain'tDelia."

  "Dear Tom," Davidson read, in a mincing falsetto, "We are closing upunexpected, so I won't be here to-night. I am going to Mamie Brennan'sand if you want to talk to me you can get me by calling up Anderson'sdrug-store. The clerk is a gentleman friend of mine. Mr. Carter, thebutler, told me before he left he would get me a place as parlor maid,so I'll have another situation soon. Delia."

  The sergeant scowled. "I'm goin' to talk to Tom," he said, reaching outfor the note. "He's got a nice family, and things like that're bad forthe force."

  I lighted the cigar, which had been my excuse for loitering on thepavement, and went on. It sounded involved for a novice, but if I couldfind Anderson's drug-store I could find Mamie Brennan; through MamieBrennan I would get Delia; and through Delia I might find Carter. I wasvague from that point, but what Miss Fleming had said of Carter had mademe suspicious of him. Under an arc light I made the first note in mynew business of man-hunter and it was something like this:

  Anderson's drug-store.

  Ask for Mamie Brennan.

  Find Delia.

  Advise Delia that a policeman with a family is a bad bet.

  Locate Carter.

  It was late when I reached the corner of Chestnut and Union Streets,where Fred had said Allan Fleming had come to grief in a cab. But thecorner-man had gone, and the night man on the beat knew nothing, ofcourse, of any particular collision.

  "There's plinty of 'em every day at this corner," he said cheerfully."The department sinds a wagon here every night to gather up the pieces,autymobiles mainly. That trolley pole over there has been sliced offclean three times in the last month. They say a fellow ain't a graduateof the autymobile school till he can go around it on the sidewalkwithout hittin' it!"

  I left him looking reminiscently at the pole, and went home to bed. Ihad made no headway, I had lost conceit with myself and a day andevening at the office, and I had gained the certainty that MargeryFleming was safe in Bellwood and the uncertain address of a servant who_might_ know something about Mr. Fleming.

  I was still awake at one o'clock and I got up impatiently and consultedthe telephone directory. There were twelve Andersons in the city whoconducted drug-stores.

  When I finally went to sleep, I dreamed that I was driving MargeryFleming along a street in a broken taxicab, and that all the buildingswere pharmacies and numbered eleven twenty-two.