The three looked at each other in an extremely suspicious way, and the woman again demanded, this time threateningly, what it all meant.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The three looked at each other in an extremely suspicious way.--_]
"Something with a glitter, and it rolled under there," was all Bristol could tell her about it.
"Let"s get it, whatever it is!" said Fox, with an apparent burst of bravery and spirit.
So Bristol at one end and Fox at the other end of the sofa, rolled it out with a great show of caution, while Mrs. Winslow, though preserving a good position for observation, kept nimbly out of the way.
"What can it be?" she persisted excitedly.
"A vial sealed with red wax, with a string attached, and containing some clear liquid," said Fox, stooping to pick it up.
"Don"t--don"t, Fox!" shouted Bristol, pushing him back impetuously; "the devilish thing may burst and kill us all--nitro-glycerine, you know!"
Mrs. Winslow shuddered, drew her elegant wrappings about her fair shoulders, as if the thought chilled her like the sudden opening of some cold vault, and looked appealingly at the two men.
"Or might contain some deadly poison," said Fox, in a warning tone.
"And the fiend who threw it in here expected the bottle to break and the poison to murder us!" said Mrs. Winslow indignantly.
"Things have come to a pretty pa.s.s when attempts like this are made on people"s lives!" said Bristol, adjusting his spectacles and edging towards the mysterious missile.
"I shall move at once," stoutly affirmed Mrs. Winslow.
"Don"t do any such thing," said Fox earnestly. "That will only show whoever may be committing these indignities that we are alarmed by them."
"We?--_we?_" repeated the adventuress, with a peculiar accent upon the word "we." "It isn"t you men that is meant. It"s _me_. This is some of that Lyon"s doings. Oh, I could cut his heart out!"
The detectives saw that she was getting greatly excited, and Bristol, with a view of quieting her as much as possible for the night, picked up the vial by a string tied to it and hung it upon a nail, remarking that he was something of a chemist himself and didn"t believe it was explosive, and also expressed a conviction that Mrs. Winslow should have it a.n.a.lyzed.
To this she acceded, and expressed a determination to "get even" with the author of these outrages, in which laudable resolve the detectives promised to a.s.sist her; but the peach brandy seemed the only relief possible to Mrs. Winslow for the remainder of the evening, which was chiefly pa.s.sed in wild speculations and theories concerning the new "manifestations," which she began to fear might be the result of jealous clairvoyants and vindictive spiritualists, who had endeavored to blackmail both herself and Mr. Lyon, and, failing in this, were now persecuting her.
The next day Mrs. Winslow went out quietly and secured the services of a chemist under the Osborne House, who p.r.o.nounced the contents nothing but water, which proved a great relief to the agitated trio, but did not remove from Mrs. Winslow"s mind the anxiety and unrest that these undesired and unlooked-for materializations were causing.
About noon, after Fox and Bristol had come in from a little stroll and they were all laughing over the scare of the previous evening, a step was heard on the stairs, and soon after a little man with a big box on his shoulder, and a slouched hat on his head which hid his face pretty thoroughly, came to the head of the stairs, knocked at the door, and without waiting for an invitation to come in, entered, and depositing the box with the remark, "For Mrs. Winslow, from the Misses Grim,"
spryly sprang back, shut the door, and clattered away down the stairs and into the street before Mrs. Winslow could get a second look at him, though she sprang after him, shouting, "Here! here! come back here or I"ll have you arrested!" But he only clattered away the livelier, and she returned to the room raging and vowing that the box contained some infernal machine for the purpose of distributing minute portions of her anatomy all over the city of Rochester.
This became more likely when Mrs. Winslow recollected that the Misses Grim--Tabitha, Amanda, and Hannah--were the three old maids from whom she had thought she had secured a wealthy old banker to pluck; and though he had proven to her a very ordinary man, somewhat infirm from rheumatism, and a trifle quarrelsome, though eminently virtuous and punctilious, she had never, of course, let them know how badly she had been swindled; and as they yet regarded their lost boarder, Bristol, as a priceless treasure, lost to them through her perfidy, it was no more than natural, Mrs. Winslow thought, that in their chagrin and disappointment they should concoct some diabolical plan to injure her.
But still it might not be from them. She had other enemies, many of them, and the Misses Grim"s name might have been given to cover up some other person"s misdeeds. But whatever it might be, her curiosity soon overcame her fear, and she requested Fox to open it.
After securing a hammer from his room, the latter proceeded to open the mysterious box; but after the cover had been partially drawn and it was evident that the box had not been delivered for the purpose of exterminating anybody, it occurred to its fair owner that there might be something within it not desirable for her to let the gentlemen see, whereupon she requested them to retire; but after Bristol had grumblingly disappeared, and Fox had got to the door, she recalled the latter and asked him anxiously if he would not open it for her. He gallantly agreed to, and got down on his knees upon the carpet and began taking off the cover.
"I do wonder what it can be!" said Mrs. Winslow anxiously.
"I can"t find anything but bran," returned Fox, digging about the box carefully.
"Bran!" she exclaimed incredulously; "that box is too heavy for bran."
Fox dug away for a little while longer and finally shouted, "I"ve got something!"
"And what is that something?"
The question was answered by the thing itself, which now appeared from the bottom of the box, vigorously lifted by Fox"s hand and plumped through the bran upon the carpet.
"Well, what is it?" she demanded.
"Vegetable," said Fox tersely.
"Oh, pshaw! is _that_ all?" asked the disgusted woman.
"Yes, that"s all," he replied, after digging about in the bran for a moment. Mrs. Winslow also satisfied herself that it was all by searching in the bran, and the two then proceeded to investigate the vegetable.
"It"s a turnip, and somebody"s been digging in it," said Mrs. Winslow.
"I think you are mistaken," mildly interposed Fox. "It"s something else entirely."
"What"s this!" exclaimed the woman; "sure as I live, a cross-bones and skull on one side, and on the other side, "D-e-a-d"--dead!"
"It isn"t dead turnip!" interrupted Fox.
"Dead beet?" she asked musingly, a sudden crimson flooding into her face.
"Shouldn"t wonder," he answered.
Biting her lips she glided to a window. It was a cold autumn day, and the panes rattled drearily as she seemed to shrink and hide between them and the heavy curtains, while the color came and went hotly in her face.
It hurt her, wounded her, showed her to be the thing she was in a way that could never have been effected by ten thousand innuendoes or direct charges; and she pressed her face against the cold panes as if to force and drive away the hideous picture that a momentarily honest glimpse of herself had revealed to her, and continued standing thus, buried in the memories which build remorse, until, noticing the thing in her hand which had caused this humiliation, she flung it violently across the room, and rushing into her sleeping-room, hastily prepared for going out, then dashing through the reception-room, she pa.s.sed into the hall, and meeting Bristol, said:
"Bristol, I want you to come with me!"
Bristol immediately complied, but was given a lively chase, for Mrs.
Winslow was strong of limb, fleet of foot, and, on this occasion, was impelled by a burst of spirit which, if rightly directed, would have led a conquering army.
She started directly for Main Street, and turned up that thoroughfare at a pace which attracted considerable attention. After rapidly walking two blocks she swept across the street, and after having waited for Bristol to come up with her, plunged into the little restaurant under Washington Hall, with my operative close at her heels.
The sudden entrance of the couple caused a great commotion in the quaint little eating-room, and the drowsy customers smiled when they saw the unaccustomed form of the woman whom the Misses Grim--Tabitha, Amanda and Hannah--had taken no trouble to prevent being known as her deadly enemy.
Tabitha, the most ancient, at once bristled up and took a position behind her neat counter, her wrinkled head trembling with so much excitement that her spa.r.s.e curls created a kind of quivering nimbus about it.
"Well, ma"am and what can _I_ do for _you_?" asked Tabitha with a flaunt of her head and a sarcastic tinge in her voice.
Mrs. Winslow got to the counter in two or three quick jumps or starts, and asked, husky with rage, "I--I just want to know which one of you old straws sent that box to me?"
"Box to _you_!" jerked out Amanda, the next less ancient of the Misses Grim, who had just entered and at once stopped stock still to catch Mrs.
Winslow"s remark; "box to you? Tush!--box to n.o.body!" and she too sidled in behind the counter to reinforce, and tremble with, her very old sister.
"Oh, you can"t play your innocence on me!" retorted Mrs. Winslow very violently. "You wear very white collars, and very black caps and very straight dresses, and look very saintly, but you"re just three old witches; that"s what you are!"