Bartlett Mystery — Chapter 27 - The Settlement

CHAPTER XXVII THE SETTLEMENT

The chief disliked melodrama in official affairs.

Any man, even a crook, ought to know when he is beaten, and take his punishment with a stiff upper lip.

But Voles's face was white, and in one of his temperament, that was as ominous a sign as the bloodshot eyes of a wild boar.

Steingall had hoped that Voles would walk quietly into the chart-room, and, seeing the folly of resistance, yield to the law without a struggle.

Perhaps, under other conditions, he might have done so.

It was the coming of Fowle that had complicated matters.

The strategic position was simple enough.

Voles had the whole of the after-deck to himself.

In the river, unknown to him, was the police launch.

On the wharf, plain in view, were several policemen, whose clothes in nowise concealed their character.

On the bridge, visible now, was the uniformed police-captain.

Above all, there was Fowle, wriggling in Carshaw's grasp, and pointing frantically at him, Voles.

"Come right along, Mr. Vane," said Steingall encouragingly; "we'd like a word with you."

The planets must have been hostile to the Meiklejohn family in that hour.

Brother William was being badly handled by Mrs. Carshaw in Atlantic City, and Brother Ralph was receiving a polite request to come up-stairs and be cuffed.

But Ralph Vane Meiklejohn faced the odds creditably.

People said afterward it was a pity he was such a fire-eater.

Matters might have been arranged much more smoothly.

As it was, he looked back, perhaps, through a long vista of misspent years, and the glance was not encouraging.

Of late, his mind had dwelt with somewhat unpleasant frequency on the finding of a dead body in the quarry near his Vermont home.

His first great crime had found him out when he was beginning to forget it.

He had walked that moment from the presence of a girl whose sorrowful, frightened face reminded him of another long-buried victim of that quarry tragedy.

He knew, too, that this girl had been defrauded by him and his brother of a vast sum of money, and a guilty conscience made the prospect blacker than it really was.

And then, he was a man of fierce impulses, of ungovernable rage, a very tiger when his baleful passions were stirred.

A wave of madness swept through him now.

He saw the bright prospect of an easily-earned fortune ruthlessly replaced by a more palpable vision of prison walls and silent, whitewashed corridors.

Perhaps the chair of death itself loomed through the red mist before his eyes.

Yet he retained his senses sufficiently to note the police-captain's slight signal to his men to come on board, and again he heard Steingall's voice: "Don't make any trouble, Voles.

It'll be all the worse for you in the end."

The detective's warning was not given without good cause.

He knew the faces of men, and in the blazing eyes of this man he read a maniacal fury.

Voles glanced toward the river.

It was nearly night.

He could swim like an otter.

In the sure confusion he might--Then, for the first time, he noticed the police launch.

His right hand dropped to his hip.

"Ah, don't be a fool, Voles!"

came the cry from the bridge.

"You're only making matters worse."

A bitter smile creased the lips of the man who felt the world slipping away beneath him.

His hand was thrust forward, not toward the occupants of the bridge, but toward the wharf.

Fowle saw him and yelled.

A report and the yell merged into a scream of agony.

Voles was sure that Fowle had betrayed him, and took vengeance.

There was a deadly certainty in his aim.

Steingall, utterly fearless when action was called for, swung himself down by the railings.

He was too late.

A second report, and Voles crumpled up.

His bold spirit had not yielded nor his hand failed him in the last moment of his need.

A bullet was lodged in his brain.

He was dead ere the huge body thudded on the deck.

When Carshaw found Winifred in a cabin--to open the door they had to obtain the key from Voles's pocket--the girl was sobbing pitifully.

She heard the revolver shots, and knew not what they betokened.

She was so utterly shaken by these last dreadful hours that she could only cling to her lover and cry in a frightened way that went to his heart: "Oh, take me away, Rex!

It was all my fault.

Why did I not trust you?

Please, take me away!"

He fondled her hair and endeavored to kiss the tears from her eyes.

"Don't cry, little one!"

he whispered.

"All your troubles have ended now."

It was a simple formula, but effective.

When repeated often enough, with sufficiently convincing caresses, she became calmer.

When he brought her on deck all signs of the terrible scene enacted there had been removed.

She asked what had caused the firing, and he told her that Voles was arrested.

It was sufficient.

So sensitive was she that the mere sound of the dead bully's name made her tremble.

"I remember now," she whispered.

"I was sure he had killed you.

I knew you would follow me, Rex.

When I saw you I forgot all else in the joy of it.

Are you sure you are not injured?"

At another time he would have laughed, but her worn condition demanded the utmost forbearance.

"No, dearest," he assured her.

"He did not even try to hurt me.

Now let me take you to my mother."

The captain, thoroughly scared by the events he had witnessed, came forward with profuse apologies and offers of the ship's hospitality.

Carshaw felt that the man was not to blame, but the _Wild Duck_ held no attractions for him.

He hurried Winifred ashore.

Steingall came with them.

The district police would make the official inquiries as a preliminary to the inquest which would be held next day.

Carshaw must attend, but Winifred would probably be excused by the authorities.

He conveyed this information in scraps of innuendo.

Winifred did not know of Voles's death or the shooting of Fowle till many days had passed.

Fowle did not die.

He recovered, after an operation and some months in a hospital.

Then Carshaw befriended him, obtained a situation for him, and gave him money to start life in an honest way once more.

There was another scene when Mrs. Carshaw brought Meiklejohn to her apartment and found Rex and Winifred awaiting them.

Winifred, of course, had never seen the Senator, and there was nothing terrifying to her in the sight of a haggard, weary-looking, elderly gentleman.

She was far more fluttered by meeting Rex's mother, who figured in her mind as a domineering, cruel, old lady, elegantly merciless, and gifted with a certain skill in torture by words.

Mrs. Carshaw began to dispel that impression promptly.

"My poor child!"

she cried, with a break in her voice, "what you have undergone!

Can you ever forgive me?"

Carshaw, ignoring Meiklejohn, whispered to his mother that Winifred should be sent to bed.

She was utterly worn out.

One of the maids should sleep in her room in case she awoke in fright during the night.

When left alone with Meiklejohn he intended to scarify the man's soul.

But he was disarmed at the outset.

The Senator's spirit was broken.

He admitted everything; said nought in palliation.

He could have taken no better line.

When Mrs. Carshaw hastened back, fearing lest her plans might be upset, she found her son giving Winifred's chief persecutor a stiff dose of brandy.

The tragedy of Smith's Pier was allowed to sink into the obscurity of an ordinary occurrence.

Fowle's unhappily-timed appearance was explained by Rachel Craik when her frenzy at the news of Voles's death had subsided.

A chuckling remark by Mick the Wolf that "There'd been a darned sight too much fuss about that slip of a girl, an' he had fixed it," alarmed her.

She sent Fowle at top speed to Smith's Pier to warn Voles.

He arrived in time to be shot for his pains.

Carshaw and Winifred were married quietly.

Their honeymoon consisted of the trip to Massachusetts when he began work in the cotton mill.

Meiklejohn fulfilled his promise.

When the Costa Rica cotton concession reached its zenith he sold out, resigned his seat in the Senate and transferred to Winifred railway cash and gilt-edged bonds to the total value of a half a million dollars.

So the young bride enriched her husband, but Carshaw refused to desert his business.

He will die a millionaire, but he hopes to live like one for a long time.

Petch and Jim fought over Polly.

There was talk about it in East Orange, and Polly threw both over; the latest gossip is that she is going to marry a police-inspector.

Mrs. Carshaw, Sr. , still visits her "dear friend," Helen Tower.

Both of them speak highly of Meiklejohn, who lives in strict seclusion.

He is very wealthy; since he ceased to strive for gold it has poured in on him.

Winifred secured an allowance for Rachel Craik sufficient to live on, and Mick the Wolf, whose arm was never really sound again, was given a job on the Long Island estate as a watcher.

Quite recently, when the young couple came in to New York for a week-end's shopping--rendered necessary by the establishment of day and night nurseries--they entertained Steingall and Clancy at dinner in the Biltmore.

Naturally, at one stage of a pleasant meal, the talk turned on those eventful months, October and November, 1913. As usual, Clancy waxed sarcastic at his chief's expense.

"He's as vain as a star actor in the movies," he cackled.

"Hogs all the camera stuff.

Wouldn't give me even a flash when the big scene was put on."

Steingall pointed a fat cigar at him.

"Do you know what happened to a frog when he tried to emulate a bull?"

he said.

"I know what happened to a bull one night in East Orange," came the ready retort.

"The solitary slip in an otherwise unblemished career," sighed the chief.

"Make the most of it, little man.

If I allowed myself to dwell on your many blunders I'd lie down and die."

Winifred never really understood these two.

She thought their bickering was genuine.

"Why," she cried, "you are wonderful, both of you!

From the very beginning you peered into the souls of those evil men.

You, Mr. Clancy, seemed to sense a great mystery the moment you heard Rachel Craik speak to the Senator outside the club that night.

As for you, Mr. Steingall, do you know what the lawyers told Rex and me soon after our marriage?"

"No, ma'am," said Steingall.

"They said that if you hadn't sent Rex's mother to Atlantic City we might never have recovered a cent of the stolen money.

Sheer bluff, they called it.

We would have had the greatest difficulty in establishing a legal case."

Steingall weighed the point for a moment.

"Sometimes I'm inclined to think that the police know more about human nature than any other set of men," he said, at last, evidently choosing his words with care.

"Perhaps I might except doctors.

They, too, see us as we are.

But the dry legal mind does not allow sufficiently for what is called in every-day speech a guilty conscience.

In this case these people knew they had done you and your father and mother a great wrong, and that knowledge was never absent from their thoughts.

It colored every word they uttered, governed every action.

That's a heavy handicap, ma'am.

It's the deciding factor in the never-ending struggle between the police and the criminal classes.

The most callous crook walking Broadway in freedom to-night--a man who would scoff at the notion that he is bothered by any conscience at all--never passes a policeman without an instinctive sense of danger.

And that is what beats him in the long run.

Crime may be a form of lunacy--indeed, I look on it in that light myself--but, luckily for mankind, crime cannot stifle conscience."

The chief's tone had become serious; he appeared to awake to its gravity when he found the young wife's eyes fixed on his with a certain awe.

He broke off the lecture suddenly.

"Why," he cried, smiling broadly, and jerking the cigar toward Clancy, "why, ma'am, if we cops hadn't some sort of a pull, what chance would a shrimp like him have against any one of real intelligence?"

"That's what he regards as handing me a lemon for my Orange," grinned Clancy.

Winifred laughed.

The curtain can drop on the last act of her adventures to the mirthful music of her happiness.

THE END

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent.

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