The three guesses varied from 21 to 27. Either of these ages seems fabulously advanced from the standpoint of 14.
"Did you notice anything about his hands? Were they bare or did he wear gloves?"
"His right hand was bare," answered the Whistler, ""cause his fingernail scratched me when he thrun me--when he threw me down."
s.h.a.garach drew forth the glove which Chandler had brought him and was studying it profoundly. Apparently he forgot the presence of the boys, so deep was his meditation. Then at last he started out of the reverie, thanked them again and with kind a.s.surances of friendship shook their hands in parting at the door.
"Ain"t he a dandy bloke?" whispered Turkey on the stairs.
"Why didn"t yer take it, Whistler?" said Toot.
But the Whistler held his peace.
CHAPTER XXIV.
DEATHBED REVELATIONS.
When Emily Barlow ran down to s.h.a.garach"s office at noon this Sat.u.r.day she was accompanied by her friend, Beulah Ware. Beulah Ware was as dark as Emily was fair. In temperament, as in complexion, the two girls offered a contrast, Beulah"s carriage having the recollected dignity of a nun"s, while Emily"s sensibilities were all as fine as those j.a.panese swords which are whetted so keenly they divide the light leaves that fall across their edges.
"We should like to leave a note with the flowers, Mr. Aronson. Could you furnish us paper?"
Aronson was only too eager to furnish not only paper, but envelope, ink-well and a ready-filled pen. When the young ladies went out he thought a cloud pa.s.sed over the arid chapters of his Pickering XII. This was the note, pinned to a graceful bouquet, that s.h.a.garach read on his return: "My Dear Mr. s.h.a.garach: You must have read of the riot yesterday in which Robert behaved so n.o.bly. But he is even more pleased with a discovery which he made during the affair. It seems that one of the wounded convicts, who has been pa.s.sing under the name of Quirk, is no other than the coachman, Mungovan, whom none of us could find. Could you manage to call at the prison to-day? The poor fellow is seriously injured and may have important evidence in his possession. Yours truly, "EMILY BARLOW."
The violets seemed to move s.h.a.garach far more than the note, momentous as its revelation might be. His hand trembled when he reached to clasp the stems. Then he withdrew it and stood irresolute. A procession was pa.s.sing through the street below. From the window he could see the tilted necks of a line of fifers. Was it a horror of music that made him shut out these sounds so often? A dread of perfume and loveliness that made him leave the room at once with brief directions to Aronson? The casual observer would have said that he merely hurried to obey the suggestion of Emily"s note, for he took his way at once to the state prison across the river.
When Col. Mainwaring took hold of the prison that morning it was expected that two out of every five of the convicts would have to be bastinadoed before peace could be restored. Against the advice of all the deputies, including Hawkins, he had summoned his wards to the rotunda and outlined his course of action in a cool speech. The burden of it was that he intended to begin with a clean sheet and to look out for their interests rather than their sensibilities, or, as he expressed it, "to give them hard words but soft mattresses."
The matter and manner of the address had a tranquillizing effect and some of the shops that day wore as quiet and decent an aspect as any factory-room in the state. Moreover, as soon as it became known that the colonel had resolved to adopt several of the reforms demanded in d.i.c.kon Harvey"s pet.i.tion, even the moodiest of the ring-leaders felt that they could submit without any hurt to pride.
Stretched on a hospital cot, whispering with contrite eyes to a black-robed clergyman, lay Dennis Mungovan. The look on his face was peaceful and exalted. His hands were clasped. The groans of patients and the odor of drugs which filled the chamber did not reach his senses. He had just finished his deathbed confession and stood upon a secure footing on the terra firma of faith, awaiting the summons from above.
"A lawyer to speak with Quirk," announced the attendant.
"Not Quirk, but Mungovan," said the clergyman, making way.
"And must you lave me, father dear?" besought the patient, stretching out his hands as a cold man in winter reaches toward the fire.
"I have a wedding to perform, my son. Remember, your hours in this valley of tears are few, and you have left everything worldly behind you. Thank G.o.d, who in His infinite mercy has given you the grace of a happy death."
"I do, father, I do," cried the pallid sufferer.
"And an opportunity to repent of your sins. G.o.d bless you. Good-by."
The clergyman bowed to s.h.a.garach and departed--from the deathbed to the wedding service, from the grave to the cradle of life, so wide was the compa.s.s of his ministrations.
"You are dying, then?" asked s.h.a.garach.
"Wid a bullet in me breast, misthur, that the doctors can"t rache. Och, they murdhered me wid their probin". And all for what? All for nawthin". What was I to be mixin" in their riots for? Wirrasthrue! Wirrasthrue!"
"You know Robert Floyd is in the prison here?"
"Robert Floyd! For the love o" heaven, misthur, don"t tell him it"s me. Tell him I"m Quirk. Och, that lie is a sin on me sowl."
"The truth will be best when you are so near death," said s.h.a.garach, quietly. "Perhaps it would be better at all times. Besides, Mr. Floyd knows you are here."
"Misther," the dying man drew s.h.a.garach toward him. "Misther! Do me a favor for the love o" doin" good."
"What is it?"
"Will you do it--an" I"ll pray for your sowl before the throne, so help me----"
"I will if I can. What is it?"
"Keep it from Ellen."
"Keep what?"
"My name, my disgrace. Never let the poor girl know. She was my wife."
"Your wife?" s.h.a.garach was puzzled a moment. "You mean Ellen Greeley?"
"Ellen Mungovan, before G.o.d."
"Ellen Greeley is dead. She perished in the fire."
The man started up in his bed so violently as to burst the bandage of his wound. His blood began to stain the linen and s.h.a.garach was obliged to call an attendant, who adjusted it and tucked the patient snugly in. Still his gla.s.sy eyes were fixed on s.h.a.garach and his muttering lips seemed to say over the word: "Dead! Dead! Dead!"
"She was burned to death in the Arnold fire. Robert Floyd is accused of setting it and causing her death."
"Burned to death!" The man"s brain seemed bewildered.
"Didn"t you know these things?"
"Shure, how would I know them, misther, all cooped in here like a bat in a cave?"
"How did you come here?"
"Och, the foolishness came over me, wid my head tangled in dhrink. What does a man know in dhrink? He can"t tell his friend from his inimy. And me that had a dacent mother in the ould counthry and a dacent wife in the new, look at this, where it druv me."
"What crime are you charged with?"
"Wid breakin" and enterin", misther; and, sure, it was the stableman put me up to it that night I was full, and they got away and I was caught wid the watches on me and I was so shamed of Ellen and me mother at home, says I, I"ll niver disgrace them, says I, and so I gev in me name Quirk, and none of them could tell the differ."
"When was it you were arrested?" asked s.h.a.garach.
"It"s three weeks and three days yesterday, misther; that I know by the scratches I made in me cell."
"Can"t you read?"
"Only the big, black letthers, misther."
This explained Mungovan"s ignorance of Floyd"s arrest. It seemed to be an accident that the two had never met in prison. Though they occupied cells in the same ward, their daily work carried them to opposite parts of the yard, Mungovan"s to the harness-shop under "Slim" Butler; Robert"s to the greenhouses near the team gate.
"Misther!" The poor wretch clasped s.h.a.garach"s wrist and drew the lawyer"s ear to his lips again.
"Misther, will you bury me where Ellen is buried?"
"I"ll see if that can be done."
"Misther!" The man"s eyes were glazing. "Look!" He fumbled with aspen fingers in his breast, finally drawing forth an envelope. From this he removed a ringlet of black hair, probably a love-lock of Ellen"s. Then he showed the inclosed writing to s.h.a.garach. It was not addressed.
"Read it," he whispered. "Ellen gev it me to carry."
s.h.a.garach opened the envelope and read in a servant-girl"s painstaking hand the following words: "The peddler has not come for two days, so I send you this by a trustworthy messanger. As I rote you in my last, the professor said in the study, "Harry gets his deserts." That was all I could hear only he and Mr. Robert talked for a long time afterwards. The will is in the safe in the study. If I hear ennything more I will let you know, and please send me the money you promised me soon."
There was neither address nor signature to this doc.u.ment.
"To carry where?" asked s.h.a.garach, but the man"s brain was all clotted with a single idea.
"Will you bury me by Ellen"s side, misther, in the green churchyard under the soft turf that the wind combs smooth like in my own dear counthry? Will you bury me beside Ellen I disgraced so, misther? She"ll know I"m wid her there. Will you bury me, misther?"
"I will. I will. Where did Ellen bid you carry the letter?"
"The letther? Och, I carried the letther in me mouth. Sure, I wouldn"t be afther givin" up Ellen"s letther to the warden."
"I mean----" But the man was pa.s.sing through the delirium that precedes the last fainting calm. Several times his lips moved, murmuring "Ellen." His fingers clutched the love-lock to his breast. Once he turned his head and asked for "Father Flynn." But Father Flynn was ministering now at another ceremony as opposite to this as laughter is to tears.
Toward the end a smile of singular sweetness irradiated his rough face, made delicate by the waxy color of death. Were his thoughts playing back again among the memories of childhood, in the beloved island, perhaps at the knee of that honest mother whom he feared to disgrace? Or were they leaping forward to the joy of the cool bed under the churchyard daisies at Ellen"s side? s.h.a.garach, holding the shred of paper in his hand, brooding over the answer to his unanswered question, could only watch the flickering spark in reverential awe.
But he did not default his side of the pact they had made, he and Dennis Mungovan, with clasped hands in the hospital alcove. At a great sacrifice of time he sought out Ellen Greeley"s sister, explained the secret of Ellen"s marriage and Mungovan"s repentance for his follies, and, with the help of Father Flynn, persuaded her to consent to an interment of the couple together. He even went to the pains of communicating the death to Mungovan"s worthy mother, having obtained her address from Ellen Greeley"s sister and heir. But the circ.u.mstances and place of the "accident" which killed him were humanely concealed.
In return for all this solicitude the lawyer had an unaddressed and ambiguous scrawl in his possession. Three facts were established in relation to the person for whom it was intended. In the first place whoever it was he knew that Harry Arnold had "got his deserts" under his uncle"s will. Secondly, he had employed Ellen Greeley as a spy upon the doings in the professor"s household. Thirdly, he was in league with the missing peddler, who seemed to act as a go-between for Ellen and her correspondent.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE NEST-EGG HATCHES OUT.
"St! Bobbs!"
The sound was at Robert"s left ear. He had been dreaming of Emily arrayed in bridal white and kneeling at his side before the altar of joy. Uncle Benjamin in a clergyman"s surplice was p.r.o.nouncing a benediction upon them. The good old custom of a nuptial kiss was about to be observed, when the warning whisper and his prison nickname rudely awakened him to his surroundings. The sweet vision melted into a black reality, the wide arches of the cathedral contracting to narrow cell walls and the loved faces of Emily and his uncle cruelly vanishing.
"Bobbs! Do you "ear?"
"Yes!" Robert rubbed his eyes as if to restore the illusion and his answer was slumbrously indistinct.
"Count that bell."
A distant clock was giving out two strokes faintly but with vibrations prolonged in the silence.
""Ear the hother coves snoozing."
The deep breathing of the convicts grew more and more audible as Robert"s senses became sharper and he sat up on his couch.
"Hi "ear you, Bobbs. Hare you making your toilet?" inquired the facetious cracksman.
"Yes."
"Leave your bloomin" boots be"ind as a keepsake. We haren"t p.u.s.s.y-footed, me hangel."
"All right, I"m ready."
"Now, take out the blocks, me boy, and "andle with care. If they falls on your toes they might "urt, besides disturbin" the bloomin" deputy, which we must be werry careful to havoid, Bobbs, out of consideration for "is feelings. Sh!"
A footstep was heard coming along the corridor, and the re-enforcement of light told the prisoners that the turnkey had a lantern in his hand, the dim gas jet at one end only sufficing to deepen the shadows in the cells. Robert lay back on his pallet and closed his eyes till the steps retreated. In a half-minute the turnkey would be back. He was a new man, both Gradger and Hawkins being still on the sick list from the blows they had received in the riot of the day before.
"St, Bobbs, hare you ready?"
"All ready."
Robert had removed six bricks and carefully m.u.f.fled them in his bedquilt, leaving an aperture not much larger than the door of a kennel. The light came nearer and nearer and suddenly he heard the cracksman groaning piteously. The turnkey raised his lantern, approached the cell from which these sounds issued and peered in.
"Somebody bludgeoned yesterday," thought he. But "somebody" was standing at the front of his cell, with his hands firmly grasping two bars. As the turnkey stooped and brought his eyes nearer, the two bars were wrenched out and clasped around his neck. Being a st.u.r.dy fellow, his instinct was to struggle rather than to cry. But his struggle availed him nothing in the surprise of the moment, with the odds of position against him. His head was drawn down through the bars and he nuzzled a soft substance on the cracksman"s breast. Then a strange odor got possession of his senses. He gasped, fought, gasped again, and finally fainted away. When his writhings had ceased the cracksman removed his lantern and laid it lightly on the floor outside.
"Climb through, Bobbs--not that way."
Robert had stood on the bed and thrust one leg through the aperture.
"Head foremost, as the little feller dives."
Robert reversed his position, and with a terrible wrenching of his shoulders worked the upper part of his body through the opening, Dobbs giving him loyal a.s.sistance and encouragement meanwhile. The turnkey hanging helpless into the cracksman"s cell, his body outlined against the lantern, caused him to start back.
"Ee"s hall right. Hi nursed "im asleep on my breast-pin. Hain"t it daintily perfumed?"