Waring's Peril

by Charles King

  CHAPTER X.

  Lieutenant Reynolds was seated at his desk at department head-quartersabout nine o'clock that morning when an orderly in light-battery dressdismounted at the banquette and came up the stairs three at a jump."Captain Cram's compliments, sir, and this is immediate," he reported,as he held forth a note. Reynolds tore it open, read it hastily through,then said, "Go and fetch me a cab quick as you can," and disappeared inthe general's room. Half an hour later he was spinning down the leveetowards the French Market, and before ten o'clock was seated in thecaptain's cabin of the big British steamer Ambassador, which had arrivedat her moorings during the night. Cram and Kinsey were already there,and to them the skipper was telling his story.

  Off the Tortugas, just about as they had shaped their course for theBelize, they were hailed by the little steamer Tampa, bound from NewOrleans to Havana. The sea was calm, and a boat put off from the Tampaand came alongside, and presently a gentleman was assisted aboard. Heseemed weak from illness, but explained that he was Lieutenant Waring,of the United States Artillery, had been accidentally carried off tosea, and the Ambassador was the first inward-bound ship they had sightedsince crossing the bar. He would be most thankful for a passage back toNew Orleans. Captain Baird had welcomed him with the heartiness of theBritish tar, and made him at home in his cabin. The lieutenant wasevidently far from well, and seemed somewhat dazed and mentallydistressed. He could give no account of his mishap other than that toldhim by the officers of the Tampa, which had lain to when overtaken bythe gale on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning when they resumedtheir course down-stream they overhauled a light skiff and weresurprised to find a man aboard, drenched and senseless. "The left sideof his face was badly bruised and discolored, even when he came to us,"said Baird, "and he must have been slugged and robbed, for his watch,his seal-ring, and what little money he had were all gone." The secondofficer of the Tampa had fitted him out with a clean shirt, and thesteward dried his clothing as best he could, but the coat was stainedand clotted with blood. Mr. Waring had slept heavily much of the wayback until they passed Pilot Town. Then he was up and dressed Thursdayafternoon, and seemingly in better spirits, when he picked up a copy ofthe New Orleans _Picayune_ which the pilot had left aboard, and wasreading that, when suddenly he started to his feet with an exclamationof amaze, and, when the captain turned to see what was the matter,Waring was ghastly pale and fearfully excited by something he had read.He hid the paper under his coat and sprang up on deck and pacednervously to and fro for hours, and began to grow so ill, apparently,that Captain Baird was much worried. At night he begged to be put ashoreat the barracks instead of going on up to town, and Baird had become sotroubled about him that he sent his second officer in the gig with him,landed him on the levee opposite the sally-port, and there, thankingthem heartily, but declining further assistance, Waring had hurriedthrough the entrance into the barrack square. Mr. Royce, the secondofficer, said there was considerable excitement, beating of drums andsounding of bugles, at the post, as they rowed towards the shore. He didnot learn the cause. Captain Baird was most anxious to learn if thegentleman had safely reached his destination. Cram replied that he had,but in a state bordering on delirium and unable to give any coherentaccount of himself. He could tell he had been aboard the Ambassador andthe Tampa, but that was about all.

  And then they told Baird that what Waring probably saw was Wednesday'spaper with the details of the inquest on the body of Lascelles and thechain of evidence pointing to himself as the murderer. This causedhonest Captain Baird to lay ten to one he wasn't, and five to one he'dnever heard of it till he got the paper above Pilot Town. Whereupon allthree officers clapped the Briton on the back and shook him by the handand begged his company to dinner at the barracks and at Moreau's; andthen, while Reynolds sped to the police-office and Kinsey back toColonel Braxton, whom he represented at the interview, Cram remounted,and, followed by the faithful Jeffers, trotted up Rampart Street andsent in his card to Madame Lascelles, and Madame's maid brought backreply that she was still too shocked and stricken to receive visitors.So also did Madame d'Hervilly deny herself, and Cram rode home to Nell.

  "It is useless," he said. "She will not see me."

  "Then she shall see me," said Mrs. Cram.

  And so a second time did Jeffers make the trip to town that day, thistime perched with folded arms in the rumble of the pony-phaeton.

  And while she was gone, the junior doctor was having the liveliestexperience of his few years of service. Scorched and burned though shewas, Mrs. Doyle's faculties seemed to have returned with renewedacuteness and force. She demanded to be taken to her husband's side, butthe doctor sternly refused. She demanded to be told his condition, andwas informed that it was so critical he must not be disturbed,especially by her, who was practically responsible for all his trouble.Then she insisted on knowing whether he was conscious and whether he hadasked for a priest, and when informed that Father Foley had alreadyarrived, it required the strength of four men to hold her. She ravedlike a maniac, and her screams appalled the garrison. But screams andstruggles were all in vain. "Pills the Less" sent for his senior, and"Pills the Pitiless" more than ever deserved his name. He sent for astraitjacket, saw her securely stowed away in that and borne over to avacant room in the old hospital, set the steward's wife on watch and asentry at the door, went back to Waring's bedside, where Sam lay tossingin burning fever, murmured his few words of caution to Pierce and Ferry,then hastened back to where poor Doyle was gasping in agony of mind andbody, clinging to the hand of the gentle soldier of the cross, gazingpiteously into his father confessor's eyes, drinking in his words ofexhortation, yet unable to make articulate reply. The flames had donetheir cruel work. Only in desperate pain could he speak again.

  It was nearly dark when Mrs. Cram came driving back to barracks,bringing Mr. Reynolds with her. Her eyes were dilated, her cheeksflushed with excitement, as she sprang from the low phaeton, and, with amurmured "Come to me as soon as you can" to her husband, she sped awayup the stairs, leaving him to receive and entertain her passenger.

  "I, too, went to see Madame Lascelles late this afternoon," saidReynolds. "I wished to show her this."

  It was a copy of a despatch to the chief of police of New Orleans. Itstated in effect that Philippe Lascelles had not been seen or heard ofaround Key West for over two weeks. It was believed that he had gone toHavana.

  "Can you get word of this to our friend the detective?" asked Cram.

  "I have wired already. He has gone to Georgia. What I hoped to do was tonote the effect of this on Madame Lascelles; but she was too ill to seeme. Luckily, Mrs. Cram was there, and I sent it up to her. She will tellyou. Now I have to see Braxton."

  And then came a messenger to ask Cram to join the doctor at Doyle'squarters at once: so he scurried up-stairs to see Nell first and learnher tidings.

  "Did I not tell you?" she exclaimed, as he entered the parlor. "PhilippeLascelles was here that very night, and had been seen with his brotherat the office on Royal Street twice before this thing happened, andthey had trouble about money. Oh, I made her understand. I appealed toher as a woman to do what she could to right Mr. Waring, who was sogenerally believed to be the guilty man. I told her we had detectivestracing Philippe and would soon find how and when he reached NewOrleans. Finally I showed her the despatch that Mr. Reynolds sent up,and at last she broke down, burst into tears, and said she, too, hadlearned since the inquest that Philippe was with her husband, andprobably was the stranger referred to, that awful night. She evensuspected it at the time, for she knew he came not to borrow but todemand money that was rightfully his, and also certain papers thatArmand held and that now were gone. It was she who told me of Philippe'shaving been seen with Armand at the office, but she declared she couldnot believe that he would kill her husband. I pointed out the fact thatArmand had fired two shots from his pistol, apparently, and that nobullet-marks had been found in the room where the quarrel took place,and that if his shots had taken effect on his
antagonist he simply couldnot have been Waring, for though Waring had been bruised and beatenabout the head, the doctor said there was no sign of bullet-mark abouthim anywhere. She recognized the truth of this, but still she said shebelieved that there was a quarrel or was to be a quarrel between herhusband and Mr. Waring. Otherwise I believe her throughout. I believethat, no matter what romance there was about her nursing Philippe andhis falling in love with her, she did not encourage him, did not callhim here again, was true to her old husband. She is simply possessedwith the idea that the quarrel which killed her husband was betweenhimself and Mr. Waring, and that it occurred after Philippe had got hismoney and papers, and gone."

  "W-e-e-ll, Philippe will have a heap to explain when he is found," wasCram's reply. "Now I have to go to Doyle's. He is making someconfession, I expect, to the priest."

  But Cram never dreamed for an instant what that was to be.

  That night poor Doyle's spirit took its flight, and the story of miseryhe had to tell, partly by scrawling with a pencil, partly by gesture inreply to question, partly in painfully-gasped sentences, a few words ata time, was practically this. Lascelles and his party did indeed leavehim at the Pelican when he was so drunk he only vaguely knew what wasgoing on or what had happened in the bar-room where they were drinking,but his wife had told him the whole story. Lascelles wanted moredrink,--champagne; the bar-tender wanted to close up. They boughtseveral bottles, however, and had them put in the cab, and Lascelles wasgay and singing, and, instead of going directly home, insisted onstopping to make a call on the lady who occupied the upper floor of thehouse Doyle rented on the levee. Doyle rarely saw her, but she sometimeswrote to Lascelles and got Bridget to take the letters to him. She wassetting her cap for the old Frenchman. "We called her Mrs. Dawson." Thecabman drove very slowly through the storm as Doyle walked home alongwith Bridget and some man who was helping, and when they reached thegate there was the cab and Waring in it. The cab-driver was standing byhis horse, swearing at the delay and saying he would charge double fare.Doyle had had trouble with his wife for many years, and renewed troublelately because of two visits Lascelles had paid there, and that eveningwhen she sent for him he was drinking in Waring's room, had beendrinking during the day; he dreaded more trouble, and 'twas he who tookWaring's knife, and still had it, he said, when he entered the gate, andno sooner did he see Lascelles at his door than he ordered him to leave.Lascelles refused to go. Doyle knocked him down, and the Frenchmansprang up, swearing vengeance. Lascelles fired two shots, and Doylestruck once,--with the knife,--and there lay Lascelles, dead, beforeDoyle could know or realize what he was doing. In fact, Doyle never didknow. It was what his wife had told him, and life had been a hell to himever since that woman came back. She had blackmailed him, more or less,ever since he got his commission, because of an old trouble he'd had inTexas.

  And this confession was written out for him, signed by Doyle on hisdying bed, duly witnessed, and the civil authorities were promptlynotified. Bridget Doyle was handed over to the police. Certaindetectives out somewhere on the trail of somebody else were telegraphedto come in, and four days later, when the force of the fever was brokenand Waring lay weak, languid, but returning to his senses, Cram and thedoctor read the confession to their patient, and then started to theirfeet as he almost sprang from the bed.

  "It's an infernal lie!" he weakly cried. "I took that knife from Doyleand kept it. I myself saw Lascelles to his gate, safe and sound."