The Victorian Villains Megapack (50 page)

The cabman hit up his pace as they reached the slope from the Cathedral down Fifth Avenue, and the runner was distanced by several blocks. McAllister, happy and sleepy, was blissfully unconscious of being an actor in a drama of vast import to the New York police, but as they reached Forty-third Street he saw by the illuminated clock upon the Grand Central Station that it was two minutes to twelve. At the same moment a trace broke. The driver sprang from his seat, but before he could reach the ground McAllister had leaped out. Tossing a bill to the perturbed cabby, our hero threw off his ulster and sped with an agility marvellous to behold down Forty-third Street toward the station. As he dashed across Madison Avenue, directly in front of an electric car, the hand on the clock slipped a minute nearer. At that instant the slim man turned the corner from Fifth Avenue and redoubled his speed. Thirty seconds later, McAllister, in sword, doublet, hose, and feathered cap, burst into the waiting-room, carrying an ulster, clearing half its length in six strides, threw himself through the revolving door to the platform, and sprang past the astonished gate-man just as he was sliding-to the gate.

“Hi, there, give us yer ticket!” yelled the man after the retreating form of Henry VIII, but royalty made no response.

The gate closed, a gong rang twice, somewhere up ahead an engine gave half a dozen spasmodic coughs, and the forward section of the train began to pull out. McAllister, gasping for breath, a terrible pain in his side, his ulster seeming to weigh a thousand pounds, stumbled upon the platform of the car next the last. As he did so, the slim young man rushed to the gate and commenced to beat frantically upon it. The gate-man, indignant, approached to make use of severe language.

“Open this gate!” yelled the man. “There’s a burglar in disguise on that train. Didn’t you see him run through? Open up!”

“Whata yer givin’ us?” answered Gate. “Who are yer, anyhow?”

“I’m a detective sergeant!” shrieked the one outside, excitedly exhibiting a shield. “I order you to open this gate and let me through.”

Gate looked with exasperating deliberateness after the receding train; its red lights were just passing out of the station.

“Oh, go to—!” said he through the bars.

* * * *

“Is this car 2241?” inquired the breathless McAllister at the same moment, as he staggered inside.

“Sho, boss,” replied the porter, grinning from ear to ear as he received the ticket and its accompanying half-dollar. “Drawin’-room, sah? Yes-sah. Right here, sah! Yo’ frien’, he arrived some time ago. May Ah enquire what personage yo represent, sah? A most magnificent sword, sah!”

“Where’s the smoking compartment?” asked McAllister.

“Udder end, sah!”

Now McAllister had no inclination to feel his way the length of that swaying car. He perceived that the smoking compartment of the car behind would naturally be much more convenient.

“I’m going into the next car to smoke for a while,” he informed the darky.

No one was in the smoking compartment of the Benvolio, which was bright and warm, and McAllister, throwing down his ulster, stretched luxuriously across the cushions, lit a cigar, and watched with interest the myriad lights of the Greater City marching past, those near at hand flashing by with the velocity of meteors, and those beyond swinging slowly forward along the outer rim of the circle. And the idea of this huge circle, its circumference ever changing with the forward movement of its pivot, beside which the train was rushing, never passing that mysterious edge which fled before them into infinity, took hold on McAllister’s imagination, and he fancied, as he sped onward, that in some mysterious way, if he could only square that circle or calculate its radius, he could solve the problem of existence. What was it he had learned when a boy at St. Andrew’s about the circle? Pi R—one—two—two Pi R! That was it! “2πr.” The smoke from his cigar swirled thickly around the Pintsch light in the ceiling, and Henry VIII, oblivious of the anachronism, with his sword and feathered cap upon the sofa beside him, gazed solemnly into space.

“Br-r-clink!—br-r-clink!” went the track.

“Two Pi R!” murmured McAllister. “Two Pi R!”

III

Under the big moon’s yellow disk, beside and past the roaring train, along the silent reaches of the Sound, leaping on its copper thread from pole to pole, jumping from insulator to insulator, from town to town, sped a message concerning Henry VIII. The night operator at New Haven, dozing over a paper in the corner, heard his call four times before he came to his senses. Then he sent the answer rattling back with a simulation of indignation:

“Yes, yes! What’s your rush?”

The answer came swiftly:

Speci
al—Police—Headquarters—New Haven. Escaped ex-convict Welch on No. 13 from New York. Notify McGinnis. In complete disguise. Arrest and notify. Particulars long-distance phone in morning.

Ebstein.

The operator crossed the room and unhooked the telephone.

“Headquarters, please.”

“Yes. Headquarters! Is McGinnis of the New York Detective Bureau there? Tell him he’s wanted, to make an important arrest on board No. 13 when she comes through at two-twenty. Sorry. Say, tell him to bring along some cigars. I’ll give him the complete message down here.”

Then the operator went back to his paper. In a few moments he suddenly sat up.

“By gum!” he ejaculated.

BOLD ATTEMPT AT BURGLARY IN COUNTRY HOUSE

It was learned today that a well-known crook had been successful recently in securing a position as a servant at Mr. Gordon Blair’s at Scarsdale. Last evening one of the guests missed her valuable pearl necklace. In the excitement which followed the burglar made his escape, leaving the necklace behind him. The perpetrator of this bold attempt is the notorious Fatty Welch, now wanted in several States as a fugitive from justice.

“By gum!” repeated the operator, throwing down the paper. Then he went to the drawer and took ou
t a small bull-dog revolver, which he carefully loaded.

“Br-r-clink!—br-r-clink!” went the track, as the train swung round the curve outside New Haven. The brakes groaned, the porters waked from troubled slumbers in wicker chairs, one or two old women put out their arms and peered through the window-shades, and the train thundered past the depot and slowly came to a full stop. Ahead, the engine panted and steamed. Two gnomes ran, Mimi-like, out of a cavernous darkness behind the station and by the light of flaring torches began to hammer and tap the flanges. The conductor, swinging off the rear car, ran into the embrace of a huge Irishman. At the same moment a squad of policemen separated and scattered to the different platforms.

“Here! Let me go!” gasped the conductor. “What’s all this?”

“Say, Cap., I’m McGinnis—Central Office, New York. You’ve got a burglar on board. They’re after wirin’ me to make the arrest.”

“Burglar be damned!” yelled the conductor. “Do you think you can hold me up and search my train? Why, I’d be two hours late!”

“I won’t take more’n fifteen minutes,” continued McGinnis, making for the rear car.

“Come back there, you!” shouted the conductor, grasp
ing him firmly by the coat-tails. “You can’t wake up all the passengers.”

“Look here, Cap.,” expostulated the detective, “don’t ye see I’ve got to make this arrest? It won’t take a minute. The porters’ll know who they’ve got, and you’re runnin’ awful light. Have a good cigar?”

The conductor took the weed so designated and swore loudly. It was the biggest piece of gall on record. Well, hang it! He didn’t want to take McGinnis all the way to Boston, and even if he did, there would be the same confounded mix-up at the other end. He admitted finally that it was a fine night. Did McGinnis want a nip? He had a bottle in the porter’s closet. Yes, call out those niggers and make ’em tell what they knew.

The conductor was now just as insistent that the burglar should be arrested then and there as he had been before that the train should not be held up. He rushed through the cars telling the various porters to go outside. Eight or ten presently assembled upon the platform. They filled McGinnis with unspeakable repulsion.

The conductor began with car No. 2204.

“Now, Deacon, who have you got?”

The Deacon, an enormously fat darky, rolled his eyes and replied that he had “two ole women an’ er ge
n’elman gwine ortermobublin with his cheffonier.”

The conductor opined that these would prove unfertile candidates for McGinnis. He therefore turned to Moses, of car No. 2201. Moses, however, had only half a load. There was a fat man, a Mr. Huber, who travelled regularly; two ladies on passes; and a very thin man, with his wife, her sister, a maid, two nurses, and three children.

“Nothin’ doin’!” remarked the captain. “Now, Colonel, what have
you
got?”

But the Colonel, a middle-aged colored man of aristocratic appearance, had an easy answer. His entire car was full, as he expressed it, “er frogs.”

“Frenchmen!” grunted McGinnis.

The conductor remembered. Yes, they were Sanko’s Orchestra going on to give a matinée concert in Providence.

The next car had only five drummers, every one of whom was known to the conductor, as taking the trip twice a week. They were therefore counted out. That left only one car, No. 2205.

“Well, William, what have you got?”

William grinned. Though sleepy, he realized the importance of the disclosure he was about to make and was correspondingly dignified and ponderous. There was two trabblin’ gen’elmen, Mr. Smith and Mr. Higgins. He’d handled dose gen’elmen
fo’ several years. There was a very old lady, her daughter and maid. Then there was Mr. Uberheimer, who got off at Middletown. And then—William smiled significantly—there was an awful strange pair in the drawin’-room. They could look for themselves. He didn’t know nuff’n ’bout burglars in disguise, but dere was “one of ’em in er mighty curious set er fixtures.”

“Huh!
Two
of ’em!” commented McGinnis.

“That’s easy!” remarked the mollified conductor.

The telegraph operator, who read Laura Jean Libbey, now approached with his revolver.

McGinnis, another detective, and the conductor moved toward the car. William preferred the safety of the platform and the temporary distinction of being the discoverer of the fugitive. No light was visible in the drawing-room, and the sounds of heavy slumber were plainly audible. The conductor rapped loudly; there was no response. He rattled the door and turned the handle vigorously, but elicited no sign of recognition. Then McGinnis rapped with his knife on the glass of the door. He happened to hit three times. Immediately there were sounds within. Something very much like “All right, sir,” and the door was opened. The conductor and McGinnis saw a fat m
an, in blue silk pajamas, his face flushed and his eyes heavy with sleep, who looked at them in dazed bewilderment.

“Wot do you want?” drawled the fat man, blinking at the lantern.

“Sorry to disturb you,” broke in McGinnis briskly, “but is there any wan else, beside ye, to kape ye company?”

Wilkins shook his head with annoyance and made as if to close the door, but the detective thrust his foot across the threshold.

“Aisy there!” he remarked. “Conductor, just turn on that light, will ye?”

Wilkins scrambled heavily into his berth, and the conductor struck a match and turned on the Pintsch light. Only one bed was occupied, and that by the fat man in the pajamas. On the sofa was an elegant alligator-skin bag disclosing a row of massive silver-topped bottles. A tall silk hat and Inverness coat hung from a hook, and a suit of evening clothes, as well as a business suit of fustian, were neatly folded and lying on the upper berth.

At this vision of respectability both McGinnis and the conductor recoiled, glancing doubtfully at one another. Wilkins saw his advantage.

“May I hinquire,” remarked he, with dignity, “wot you mean by these hactions? W’y am I thus distur
bed in the middle of the night? It is houtrageous!”

“Very sorry, sir,” replied the conductor. “The fact is, we thought
two
people, suspicious characters, had taken this room together, and this officer here”—pointing to McGinnis—“had orders to arrest one of them.”

Wilkins swelled with indignation.

“Suspicious characters! Two people! Look ’ere, conductor, I’ll ’ave you to hunderstand that I will not tolerate such a performance. I am Mr. McAllister, of the Colophon Club, New York, and I am hon my way to hattend the wedding of Mr. Frederick Cabot in Boston, tomorrow. I am to be ’is best man. Can I give you any further hinformation?”

The conductor, who had noticed the initials “McA” on the silver bottle heads, and the same stamped upon the bag, stammered something in the nature of an apology.

“Say, Cap.,” whispered McGinnis, “we’ve got him wrong, I guess. This feller ain’t no burglar. Anywan can see he’s a swell, all right. Leave him alone.”

“Very sorry to have disturbed you,” apologized the conductor humbly, putting out the light and closing the door.

“That nigger must be nutty,” he added to the detective. “B
y Joshua! Perhaps he’s got away with some of my stuff!”

“Look here, William, what’s the matter with you? Have you been swipin’ my whisky. There ain’t two men in that drawin’-room at all—just one—a swell,” hollered the conductor as they reached the platform.

“Fo’ de Lawd, Cap’n, I ain’t teched yo’ whisky,” cried William in terror. “I swear dey was two of ’em, ’n’ de udder was in
dis
guise. It was de fines’
dis
guise I eber saw!” he added reminiscently.

“Aw, what yer givin’ us!” exclaimed McGinnis, entirely out of patience. “What kind av a disguise was he in?”

“Dat’s what I axed him,” explained William, edging toward the rim of the circle. “I done ax him right away what character he done represent. He had on silk stockin’s, an’ a colored deglishay shirt, an’ a belt an’ moccasons, an’ a sword an’——”

“A sword!” yelled McGinnis, making a jump in William’s direction. “I’ll break yer black head for ye!”

“Hold on!” cried the conductor, who had disappeared into the car and had emerged again with a bottle in his hand. “The stuff’s here.”