CHAPTER XVIII
LOVE AND DUTY
Dismissing the men who had assisted us in the capture of these two hardy villains, we ranged our prisoners before us.
“Now,” said Mr. Gryce, “no fuss and no swearing; you are in for it, and you might as well take it quietly as any other way.”
“Give me a clutch on that girl, that’s all,” said her father, “Where is she? Let me see her; every father has a right to see his own daughter,”
“You shall see her,” returned my superior, “but not till her husband is here to protect her.”
“Her husband? ah, you know about that do you?” growled the heavy voice of the son. “A rich man they say he is and a proud one. Let him come and look at us lying here like dogs and say how he will enjoy having his wife’s father and brother grinding away their lives in prison.
“Mr. Blake is coming,” quoth Mr. Gryce, who by some preconcerted signal from the window had drawn that gentleman across the street. “He will tell you himself that he considers prison the best place for you.” Blast you! but he—”
“But he, what?” inquired I, as the door opened and Mr. Blake with a pale face and agitated mien entered the room.
The wretch did not answer. Rousing from the cowering position in which they had both lain since their capture, the father and son struggled up in some sort of measure to their feet, and with hot, anxious eyes surveyed the countenance of the gentleman before them, as if they felt their fate hung upon the expression of his pallid face. The son was the first to speak.
“How do you do, brother-in-law,” were his sullen and insulting words.
Mr. Blake shuddered and cast a look around.
“My wife?” murmured he.
“She is well,” was the assurance given by Mr. Gryce, “and in a room not far from this. I will send for her if you say so.”
“No, not yet,” came in a sort of gasp; “let me look at these wretches first, and understand if I can what my wife has to suffer from her connection with them.”
“Your wife,” broke in the father, “what’s that to do with it; the question is how do you like it and what will you do to get us clear of this thing.”
“I will do nothing,” returned Mr. Blake. “You amply merit your doom and you shall suffer it to the end for all me.”
“It will read well in the papers,” exclaimed the son.
“The papers are to know nothing about it,” I broke in. “All knowledge of your connection with Mr. or Mrs. Blake is to be buried in this spot before we or you leave it. Not a word of her or him is to cross the lips of either of you from this hour. I have set that down as a condition and it has got to be kept.”
“You have, have you,” thundered in chorus from father and son. “And who are you to make conditions, and what do you think we are that you expect us to keep them? Can you do anymore than put us back from where we came from?”
For reply I took from my pocket the ring I had fished out of the ashes of their kitchen stove on that memorable visit to their house, and holding it up before their faces, looked them steadily in the eye.
A sudden wild glare followed by a bluish palor that robbed their countenances of their usual semblance of daring ferocity, answered me beyond my fondest hopes.
“I got that out of the stove where you had burned your prison clothing,” said I. “It is a cheap affair, but it will send you to the gallows if I choose to use it against you. The pedlar—”
“Hush,” exclaimed the father in a low choked tone greatly in contrast to any he had yet used in all our dealings with him. “Throw that ring out of the window and I promise to hold my tongue about any matter you don’t want spoke of. I’m not a fool—”
“Nor I,” was my quick reply, as I restored the ring to my pocket. “While that remains in my possession together with certain facts concerning your habits in that old house of yours which have lately been made known to me, your life hangs by a thread I can any minute snip in two. Mr. Blake here, has spent some portion of a night in your house and knows how near it lies to a certain precipice, at foot of which—”
“Mein Gott, father, why don’t you say something!” leaped in cowed accents from the son’s white lips. “If they want us to keep quiet, let them say so and not go talking about things that—”
Now look here,” interposed Mr. Gryce stepping before them with a look that closed their mouths at once. “I will just tell you what we propose to do. You are to go back to prison and serve your time out, there is no help for that, but as long as you behave yourselves and continue absolutely silent regarding your relationship to the wife of this gentleman, you shall have paid into a certain bank that he will name, a monthly sum that upon your dismissal from jail shall be paid you with whatever interest it may have accumulated. You are ready to promise that, are you not?” he inquired turning to Mr. Blake.
That gentleman bowed and named the sum, which was liberal enough, and the bank.
“But,” continued the detective, ignoring the sudden flash of eye that passed between the father and son, “let me or any of us hear of a word having been uttered by you, which in the remotest way shall suggest that you have in the world such a connection as Mrs. Blake, and the money not only stops going into the bank, but old scores shall be raked up against you with a zeal which if it does not stop your mouth in one way, will in another, and that with a suddenness you will not altogether relish.”
The men with a dogged air from which the bravado had however fled, turned and looked from one to the other of us in a fearful, inquiring way that duly confessed to the force of the impression made by these words upon their slow but not unimaginative minds.
“Do you three promise to keep our secret if we keep yours?” muttered the father with an uneasy glance at my pocket.
We certainly do,” was our solemn return.
“Very well; call in the girl and let me just look at her, then, before we go. We won’t say nothing,” continued he, seeing Mr. Blake shrink, “only she is my daughter and if I cannot bid her good-bye—”
“Let him see his child,” cried Mr. Blake turning with a shudder to the window. “I—I wish it,” added he.
Straightway with hasty foot I left the room. Going to the little closet where I had ordered his wife to remain concealed, I knocked and entered. She was crouched in an attitude of prayer on the floor, her face buried in her hands, and her whole person breathing that agony of suspense that is a torture to the sensitive soul.
“Mrs. Blake,” said I, dismissing the landlady who stood in helpless distress beside her, “the arrest has been satisfactorily made and your father calls for you to say good-bye before going away with us. Will you come?”
“But my—my—Mr. Blake?” exclaimed she leaping to her feet. “I am sure I heard his footstep in the hall?”