The Incendiary Part 48

"And it starts so early in the morning?"

"Yes; somewhere between 8 and 9."

Aronson looked at his watch. It was just 8:15. If he could catch a train back, he might be in town at a little after half-past. And then--a delay! These great steamers are often delayed!

"Toot! Toot! Toot!" came the warning whistle of an engine, and Aronson was das.h.i.+ng down the path, never stopping to pick up his hat that was lifted off by the wind, bent only on beating his steam-propelled rival to the station. It took him the whole journey townward to recover the wind he had lost in that unwonted quarter-mile run. People laughed at his hatless head, but he did not heed them. Besides, if he had been a philosopher, he might have retorted that hats on a dog-day are simply one of the nuisances of civilized conventionality. So he took a wharf car and in less than half an hour was running out to the edge of the great Red Star quay, there to behold the Venetia proudly backing into the channel on the flood of the tide and turning her head oceanward. I regret to say this spectacle filled Aronson with violent wrath, and the wharf loungers must have taken him for a wild man as he smote his fists together and danced about.

"Missed your boat?" inquired casually a sea-beaten man, but Aronson was too irate to appreciate his well-meant sympathy. He only ran to the edge of the wharf and looked off, shading his eyes from the glare of the water.

Presently he found the man at his elbow again.

"I can catch her for you if it's anything important," said the tar.

"I'll give you--I'll give you--" and then he checked himself, appalled at his own rashness. "How much will you charge?" he asked.

"Well, the Venetians steaming for a record this trip."

"How much?"

"She's got a start of a mile, and going twenty knots."

"How much?"

"There were some picnic folks I expected down here to charter my tug. Don't see them, but they may drop in. I suppose you'll allow something for the disappointment if they come."

"How much?" persisted Aronson, but the Venetia had just disappeared behind an island and the thought of returning empty-handed to s.h.a.garach acted like a rowel in his flank. "I'll give you $50," he cried, suddenly.

"Done," said the Yankee, wringing his hand, and then Aronson knew that he ought to have offered $25. But it was no time for haggling. "At any cost," he repeated to himself. The mariner hurried him in and out among the wharves, till they came upon a battered but resolute-looking tugboat, on which two or three deck-hands were lounging.

"Get steam up, Si," cried the skipper, and after a delay which seemed an hour to Aronson the water began to be churned to foam before her bow and the little craft had started on its long chase.

Past the islands of the harbor, past the slow merchant schooners, past the white-sailed careening pleasure sloops, past the harbor police boat, past the revenue cutter, past the excursion steamers to local beaches, past the crowded Yarmouth, they flew, cheered on by the pa.s.sengers--for everybody soon saw it was a race.

Aronson was studying the wide beam of the Venetia in front. How slowly they were gaining! They were out beyond the farthest island in the harbor, the lighthouse shoal that is covered at high tide, and still the Red Star liner bore away from them with half a mile of clear water between.

"Cheer up, s.h.i.+pmate," cried Perkins; "she's gettin' bigger and bigger. Heap the coals on down there, Si."

The Venetia must have sighted her pursuer long ago, and indeed the faces of her pa.s.sengers on the bow were becoming more and more visible every moment. But this was a record trip, and it would be beneath her dignity to slow up for every petty rowboat that hailed her. So her engines continued to pump and she clove the glorious waters swiftly.

"Ahoy!" shouted Capt. Perkins.

"Ahoy yourself!" came the answer. Aronson thought he saw a woman's face that he knew on the deck.

"Heave to! A boarder!"

"Tell him to get out of bed in time," came the ungracious reply. Evidently the Venetia's third mate was under orders not to stop for any belated pa.s.senger.

"What's your errand?" asked the skipper, a little puzzled, of Aronson.

"I have a subpoena from the court," cried Aronson, all agog.

"Oh, you're a court officer."

Then he rounded his hands and holloaed up: "A court officer aboard!"

Court officer! This made an impression. The third mate withdrew from the gunwale and presently reappeared with the captain.

"Lash her to!" cried the captain. The tug-boat hugged her great sister and a ladder was let down, upon which Aronson mounted. With the white paper in his hand he looked decidedly formidable.

"I have a subpoena for Mrs. Alice Arnold, one of your pa.s.sengers. She is wanted as a witness in a murder trial. There she is," he added, for Mrs. Arnold stood in front of the crowd that had rolled like a barrel of ballast toward the center of interest. The captain was nonplused. He was not familiar enough with law terms to know the limits of a subpoena's authority. But he felt that he was to some extent the protector of his pa.s.sengers.

"I don't understand this," he said, turning to Mrs. Arnold.

"It is a great annoyance to me if I must go on so trifling a matter," she said. She was pale and her manner was haughty. To Aronson it was something more. It bore every indication of conscious guilt. He had not foreseen resistance. The doc.u.ment, with s.h.a.garach's name appended, he had thought would open caverns and cause walls to fall.

"There is the lady. She prefers not to go. I presume you will have to compel her. But I don't see that I can permit violence on board my s.h.i.+p."

The pa.s.sengers seemed to gloat on Saul Aronson's discomfiture, and s.h.a.garach's faithful courier was almost beside himself. In the distance lay the city, crowned with its gold dome, dwindling from sight. The lonely ocean roared around him. Capt. Perkins' tiny tug still hugged the larboard of her giant sister.

"It appears to me that paper's no good," said the second mate suddenly. He happened to be a little of a lawyer. "Let's have a look."

Aronson reluctantly saw the summons leave his hand.

"Suffolk county. This ain't Suffolk county," cried the mate, while the ring of pa.s.sengers laughed.

"s.h.i.+nny on your own side, youngster," he added, returning the paper.

"But it's America," cried Aronson.

"Just pa.s.sed the three-mile limit," said the captain. He was an Englishman, the mate was an Englishman. They had no particular love for anything American, except the output of our national mints.

"I'm afraid the captain's right, young man," said a kind, elderly gentleman, who might be a lawyer recruiting his health by an ocean trip before the fall term opened. "You've got beyond your jurisdiction."

Mrs. Arnold had gone below and the hatless invader reluctantly abandoned his prize. On the homeward voyage he gave way to exhaustion and fell into several naps of forty winks' duration, during the last of which a grotesque dream troubled his peace. He found himself chasing Serena Lamb around an enormous ba.s.s drum, as big as the Heidelberg tun, on the stretched skin of which the oaf, the manikin and the pantaloon were dancing a fandango. Still he chased Serena and still she escaped him, the toes of the dancers pounding a heavy tattoo. Faster and faster pursuer and pursued whirled around the side of the drum, till Aronson's head swam like a kitten's in hot pursuit of his own tail. At last in his despair he hurled the subpoena at Serena's head.

The three dancers disappeared with a bursting sound into the hollow of the drum, and he awoke to find the tugboat just b.u.mping its side against the dock. The sea had smoothed down to a lack-l.u.s.ter glaze, but it was less dreary than the heart of the baffled pursuer.

"We may as well cancel that little debit item now," said Skipper Perkins, flinging a coil of rope ash.o.r.e.

"At any cost," repeated Aronson sorely to himself. He had done his best, but Mrs. Arnold was out of sight of land--a fugitive from justice.

CHAPTER LVIII.

THE MIRACLE.

It was after two o'clock when, breathless, spiritless, and penniless, Saul Aronson arrived at the court-room again. The examination of Bertha was nearly ended.

"Will you take these spectacles, Miss Lund?" said s.h.a.garach, handing Bertha a pair. They looked like the "horns" that used to straddle our grandfathers' noses, being uncommonly large, circular in shape and fitted with curved wires to pa.s.s over the ears.

"Do they bear any resemblance to Prof. Arnold's?"

"I thought they were his at first."

"Let us suppose they are. Will you kindly leave the stand and adjust them on this desk near the window exactly as the professor's spectacles lay on his desk that afternoon?"

Bertha took the spectacles without hesitation, walked over to the crier's desk and placed them on its edge, with their wires toward the window. Then she laid a book under the wires. This made the gla.s.ses tip a little downward. The sun was s.h.i.+ning in fiercely.

"I believe there was a waste basket in the study?" continued s.h.a.garach.

"Yes, sir."

"Like this one?" He held up an uncommonly capacious basket, over two feet high.

"The very same kind."

"And as full as this is?"

"Fuller. It was just bursting with papers."

"What kind of paper?"

"Black wrapping paper that comes off the professor's books."

"Something like this?"

"Just like that."

The paper in s.h.a.garach's wicker basket was not black, exactly, but of a deep shade which could hardly be described by the name of any known color.

"Why are you wearing a white dress, Miss Lund?"

Bertha blushed a little.

"Because light colors are cooler."

"Coolness is a strong recommendation on a day like this. Do you remember whether the Sat.u.r.day of the fire was as warm?"

"It was very hot, I know."

"The hottest day of a hot June, was it not?"

"Well, I couldn't answer that. The thermometer goes up and down like a jumping-jack here."

"You had pulled up the study curtains so as to let in the sunlight, I believe?"

"Yes, sir. That was for the poor canary. And, besides, the professor used to say the sunlight was good--good for plants and animals and everything that has life in it."

"The sun, then, was s.h.i.+ning down on the desk where the spectacles lay?"

"Just as you see it here, sir."

She pointed to the desk, by which she was still standing.

"You know, from your own experience in dresses, that dark colors absorb more heat than light ones?"

"Sir?"

"Light dresses are cooler than dark ones?"

"Yes, sir."

"Brown paper burns more quickly than white?"

"Oh, yes. You can kindle a fire with brown paper better."

"Will you take the waste-basket and place it on the floor just as far from those spectacles as the waste-basket in the study stood, and in the same direction."

Bertha measured off a short distance with her eye, picked up the basket, s.h.i.+fted it once or twice, and finally set it down with a satisfied air.

"There!"

"It stood just behind the desk, then?"

"What is the drift of all this?" interrupted the district attorney, his deep voice falling on a breathless silence. A presentiment had spread from one to another that the solution was at hand.

"We are reproducing the exact condition of the study at the time the fire occurred. These spectacles, containing powerful cataract lenses, are made from the same prescription as Prof. Arnold's, by his optician, Mr. Dean. The large basket, a mild eccentricity of the professor's, and the black paper, are also duplicates."

"What do you hope to prove?" asked Chief Justice Playfair. His answer was a shrill cry, like a bird note, from Emily, who had never withdrawn her eye from the waste basket.

"It's catching!"

Every eye in the court-room turned. Those who sat near enough beheld two tiny holes, like worm holes, suddenly pierced in the black paper, where the rays of light converged through the tilted lenses. Each had a crisp, brown margin around it. Gradually they widened and spread, as though instinct with life, one working faster than the other. Then suddenly a little circle of flame curled out, and before the onlookers realized the miracle in progress, the waste basket was throwing up red tongues of fire and sighing softly. If it were not for Sire's furious barking the railing of the bar might have caught. As it was, its varnish had begun to crackle before the nearest court officer recovered his presence of mind and threw the blazing basket out of the window.

Gazing at s.h.a.garach the spectators waited breathlessly for an elucidation. Before speaking he walked over and shook hands warmly with Emily. When he turned at last, his words came forth like a whirlwind.

"I think nothing more is needed to convince us of the source from which this fire originated. We have reproduced every circ.u.mstance of its occurrence in order to provide you with ocular demonstration. The sun supplying extraordinary heat, the burning gla.s.s duplicated by an expert and placed in position by a trustworthy witness, the focal distance estimated by her, the highly combustible fuel, identical in color and substance--can you not turn back in imagination and see happening in that deserted study all that has happened here? Can you not follow it on to the destruction of the mantel fringe just above, the awaking of the sleepy dog, the mad leap of the flames from wall to wall, and at last that whole irresistible carnival of the elements? It was no human torch, but the hot gaze of the sun, condensed through these powerful lenses, which lit that funeral pyre and dug graves for seven human beings. Fate, working out its processes in that lonely room, was the mysterious incendiary toward whom we have all been blindly groping."

As s.h.a.garach pointed upward in his awful close, the audience, on the very brink of an outburst, held back their enthusiasm for an instant. But the chief justice was seen to bow his head, and at once the excitement broke all barriers. A loud spontaneous cheer, rendered half articulate by cries of "s.h.a.garach, s.h.a.garach!" scattered to the winds the customary restraints of the surroundings. Women embraced each other; strangers shook hands warmly; Emily Barlow rushed over and hugged Rosalie March, and drops were glistening on Chief Justice Playfair's eyelashes when he lifted his head. McCausland, standing agape on the threshold of his ante-room, completed the happy picture.

By a natural reaction the outburst was succeeded by a spell of tense repression, amid which the district attorney rose and moved the withdrawal of the case against Robert Floyd. The foreman of the jury announced that he and his a.s.sociates had long been agreed upon the innocence of the accused, and Chief Justice Playfair, dignified as an archbishop blessing his flock, expressed in his golden idiom the common feeling of thankfulness that the trial had so felicitous a termination.