The day was windy and he was going along a narrow street, when something floated down from a window above past his head. It was a woman’s veil, and as he looked up to see where it came from he met the eyes of its owner looking down from an open casement above him. She was gesticulating, and seemed to point to someone up the street. Glad to seize at anything which promised emolument or adventure, he shouted up and asked her what she wanted.
“That man down there!” she cried; “the one in a long black coat going up the street. Keep after him and stop him; tell him the telegram has come. Quick, quick, before he gets around the corner! He will pay you; run!”
Sweetwater, with joy in his heart—for five cents was a boon to him in the present condition of his affairs—rushed after the man she had pointed out and hastily stopped him.
“Someone,” he added, “a woman in a window back there, bade me run after you and say the telegram has come. She told me you would pay me,” he added, for he saw the man was turning hastily back, without thinking of the messenger. “I need the money, and the run was a sharp one.”
With a preoccupied air, the man thrust his hand into his pocket, pulled out a coin, and handed it to him. Then he walked hurriedly off. Evidently the news was welcome to him. But Sweetwater stood rooted to the ground. The man had given him a five-dollar gold piece instead of the nickel he had evidently intended.
How hungrily Sweetwater eyed that coin! In it was lodging, food, perhaps a new article or so of clothing. But after a moment of indecision which might well be forgiven him, he followed speedily after the man and overtook him just as he reached the house from which the woman’s veil had floated.
“Sir, pardon me; but you gave me five dollars instead of five cents. It was a mistake; I cannot keep the money.”
The man, who was not just the sort from whom kindness would be expected, looked at the money in Sweetwater’s palm, then at the miserable, mud-bespattered clothes he wore (he had got that mud helping the poor market-woman), and stared hard at the face of the man who looked so needy and yet returned him five dollars.
“You’re an honest fellow,” he declared, not offering to take back the gold piece. Then, with a quick glance up at the window, “Would you like to earn that money?”
Sweetwater broke out into a smile, which changed his whole countenance.
“Wouldn’t I, sir?”
The man eyed him for another minute with scrutinising intensity. Then he said shortly:
“Come upstairs with me.”
They entered the house, went up a flight or two, and stopped at a door which was slightly ajar.
“We are going into the presence of a lady,” remarked the man. “Wait here until I call you.”
Sweetwater waited, the many thoughts going through his mind not preventing him from observing all that passed.
The man, who had left the door wide open, approached the lady who was awaiting him, and who was apparently the same one who had sent Sweetwater on his errand, and entered into a low but animated conversation. She held a telegram in her hand which she showed him, and then after a little earnest parley and a number of pleading looks from them both toward the waiting Sweetwater, she disappeared into another room, from which she brought a parcel neatly done up, which she handed to the man with a strange gesture. Another hurried exchange of words and a meaning look which did not escape the sharp eye of the watchful messenger, and the man turned and gave the parcel into Sweetwater’s hands.
“You are to carry this,” said he, “to the town hall. In the second room to the right on entering you will see a table surrounded by chairs, which at this hour ought to be empty. At the head of the table you will find an arm-chair. On the table directly in front of this you will lay this packet. Mark you, directly before the chair and not too far from the edge of the table. Then you are to come out. If you see anyone, say you came to leave some papers for Mr. Gifford. Do this and you may keep the five dollars and welcome.”
Sweetwater hesitated. There was something in the errand or in the manner of the man and woman that he did not like.
“Don’t potter!” spoke up the latter, with an impatient look at her watch. “Mr. Gifford will expect those papers.”
Sweetwater’s sensitive fingers closed on the package he held. It did not feel like papers.
“Are you going?” asked the man.
Sweetwater looked up with a smile. “Large pay for so slight a commission,” he ventured, turning the packet over and over in his hand.
“But then you will execute it at once, and according to the instructions I have given you,” retorted the man. “It is your trustworthiness I pay for. Now go.”
Sweetwater turned to go. After all it was probably all right, and five dollars easily earned is doubly five dollars. As he reached the staircase he stumbled. The shoes he wore did not fit him.
“Be careful, there!” shouted the woman, in a shrill, almost frightened voice, while the man stumbled back into the room in a haste which seemed wholly uncalled for. “If you let the packet fall you will do injury to its contents. Go softly, man, go softly!”
Yet they had said it held papers!
Troubled, yet hardly knowing what his duty was, Sweetwater hastened down the stairs, and took his way up the street. The town hall should be easy to find; indeed, he thought he saw it in the distance. As he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second the reply came more slowly, and before fixing his mind determinedly upon it he asked himself why he felt that this was no ordinary commission. He could answer readily enough. First, the pay was too large, arguing that either the packet or the placing of the packet in a certain position on Mr. Gifford’s table was of uncommon importance to this man or this woman. Secondly, the woman, though plainly and inconspicuously clad, had the face of a more than ordinarily unscrupulous adventuress, while her companion was one of those saturnine-faced men we sometimes meet, whose first look puts us on our guard and whom, if we hope nothing from him, we instinctively shun. Third, they did not look like inhabitants of the house and rooms in which he found them. Nothing beyond the necessary articles of furniture was to be seen there; not a trunk, not an article of clothing, nor any of the little things that mark a woman’s presence in a spot where she expects to spend a day or even an hour. Consequently they were transients and perhaps already in the act of flight. Then he was being followed. Of this he felt sure. He had followed people himself, and something in his own sensations assured him that his movements were under surveillance. It would, therefore, not do to show any consciousness of this, and he went on directly and as straight to his goal as his rather limited knowledge of the streets would allow. He was determined to earn this money and to earn it without disadvantage to anyone. And he thought he saw his way.
At the entrance of the town hall he hesitated an instant. An officer was standing in the doorway, it would be easy to call his attention to the packet he held and ask him to keep his eye on it. But this might involve him with the police, and this was something, as we know, which he was more than anxious to avoid. He reverted to his first idea.
Mixing with the crowd just now hurrying to and fro through the long corridors, he reached the room designated and found it, as he had been warned he should, empty.
Approaching the table, he laid down the packet just as he had been directed, in front of the big arm chair, and then, casting a hurried look towards the door and failing to find anyone watching him, he took up a pencil lying near-by and scrawled hastily across the top of the packet the word “Suspicious.” This he calculated would act as a warning to Mr. Gifford in case there was anything wrong about the package, and pass as a joke with him, and even the sender, if there was not. And satisfied that he had both ear
ned his money and done justice to his own apprehensions, he turned to retrace his steps. As before, the corridors were alive with hurrying men of various ages and appearance, but only two attracted his notice. One of these was a large, intellectual-looking man, who turned into the room from which he had just emerged, and the other a short, fair man, with a countenance he had known from boyhood. Mr. Stone of Sutherlandtown was within ten paces of him, and he was as well known to the good postmaster as the postmaster was to him. Could anyone have foreseen such a chance!
Turning his back with a slow slouch, he made for a rear door he saw swinging in and out before him. As he passed through he cast a quick look behind him. He had not been recognised. In great relief he rushed on, knocking against a man standing against one of the outside pillars.
“Halloo!” shouted this man.
Sweetwater stopped. There was a tone of authority in the voice which he could not resist.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ADVENTURE OF THE SCRAP OF PAPER AND THE THREE WORDS
“What are you trying to do? Why do you fall over a man like that? Are you drunk?”
Sweetwater drew himself up, made a sheepish bow, and muttered pantingly:
“Excuse me, sir. I’m in a hurry; I’m a messenger.”
The man who was not in a hurry seemed disposed to keep him for a moment. He had caught sight of Sweetwater’s eye, which was his one remarkable feature, and he had also been impressed by that word messenger, for he repeated it with some emphasis.
“A messenger, eh? Are you going on a message now?”
Sweetwater, who was anxious to get away from the vicinity of Mr. Stone, shrugged his shoulders in careless denial, and was pushing on when the gentleman again detained him.
“Do you know,” said he, “that I like your looks? You are not a beauty, but you look like a fellow who, if he promised to do a thing, would do it and do it mighty well too.”
Sweetwater could not restrain a certain movement of pride. He was honest, and he knew it, but the fact had not always been so openly recognised.
“I have just earned five dollars by doing a commission for a man,” said he, with a straightforward look. “See, sir. It was honestly earned.”
The man, who was young and had a rather dashing but inscrutable physiognomy, glanced at the coin Sweetwater showed him and betrayed a certain disappointment.
“So you’re flush,” said he. “Don’t want another job?”
“Oh, as to that,” said Sweetwater, edging slowly down the street, “I’m always ready for business. Five dollars won’t last forever, and, besides, I’m in need of new togs.”
“Well, rather,” retorted the other, carelessly following him. “Do you mind going up to Boston?”
Boston! Another jump toward home.
“No,” said Sweetwater, hesitatingly, “not if it’s made worth my while. Do you want your message delivered today?”
“At once. That is, this evening. It’s a task involving patience and more or less shrewd judgment. Have you these qualities, my friend? One would not judge it from your clothes.”
“My clothes!” laughed Sweetwater. Life was growing very interesting all at once. “I know it takes patience to wear them, and as for any lack of judgment I may show in their choice, I should just like to say I did not choose them myself, sir; they fell to me promiscuous-like as a sort of legacy from friends. You’ll see what I’ll do in that way if you give me the chance to earn an extra ten.”
“Ah, it’s ten dollars you want. Well, come in here and have a drink and then we’ll see.”
They were before a saloon house of less than humble pretensions, and as he followed the young gentleman in it struck him that it was himself rather than his well-dressed and airy companion who would be expected to drink here. But he made no remark, though he intended to surprise the man by his temperance.
“Now, look here,” said the young gentleman, suddenly seating himself at a dingy table in a very dark corner and motioning Sweetwater to do the same; “I’ve been looking for a man all day to go up to Boston for me, and I think you’ll do. You know Boston?”
Sweetwater had great command over himself, but he flushed slightly at this question, though it was so dark where he sat with this man that it made very little difference.
“I have been there,” said he.
“Very well, then, you will go again tonight. You will arrive there about seven, you will go the rounds of some half-dozen places whose names I will give you, and when you come across a certain gentleman whom I will describe to you, you will give him—”
“Not a package?” Sweetwater broke out with a certain sort of dread of a repetition of his late experience.
“No, this slip on which two words are written. He will want one more word, but before you give it to him you must ask for your ten dollars. You’ll get them,” he answered in response to a glance of suspicion from Sweetwater. Sweetwater was convinced that he had got hold of another suspicious job. It made him a little serious. “Do I look like a go-between for crooks?” he asked himself. “I’m afraid I’m not so much of a success as I thought myself.” But he said to the man before him: “Ten dollars is small pay for such business. Twenty-five would be nearer the mark.”
“Very well, he will give you twenty-five dollars. I forgot that ten dollars was but little in advance of your expenses.”
“Twenty-five if I find him, and he is in funds. What if I don’t?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Except your ticket; that I’ll give you.”
Sweetwater did not know what to say. Like the preceding job it might be innocent and it might not. And then, he did not like going to Boston, where he was liable to meet more than one who knew him.
“There is no harm in the business,” observed the other, carelessly, pushing a glass of whiskey which had just been served him toward Sweetwater. “I would even be willing to do it myself, if I could leave New Bedford tonight, but I can’t. Come! It’s as easy as crooking your elbow.”
“Just now you said it wasn’t,” growled Sweetwater, drinking from his glass. “But no matter about that, go ahead, I’ll do it. Shall I have to buy other clothes?”
“I’d buy a new pair of trousers,” suggested the other. “The rest you can get in Boston. You don’t want to be too much in evidence, you know.”
Sweetwater agreed with. him. To attract attention was what he most dreaded. “When does the train start?” he asked.
The young man told him.
“Well, that will give me time to buy what I want. Now, what are your instructions?”
The young man gave him a memorandum, containing four addresses. “You will find him at one of these places,” said he. “And now to know your man when you see him. He is a large, handsome fellow, with red hair and a moustache like the devil. He has been hurt, and wears his left hand in a sling, but he can play cards, and will be found playing cards, and in very good company too. You will have to use your discretion in approaching him. When once he sees this bit of paper, all will be easy. He knows what these two words mean well enough, and the third one, the one that is worth twenty-five dollars to you, is Frederick.”
Sweetwater, who had drunk half his glass, started so at this word, which was always humming in his brain, that he knocked over his tumbler and spilled what was left in it.
“I hope I won’t forget that word,” he remarked, in a careless tone, intended to carry off his momentary show of feeling.
“If you do, then don’t expect the twenty-five dollars,” retorted the other, finishing his own glass, but not offering to renew Sweetwater’s.
Sweetwater laughed, said he thought he could trust his memory, and rose. In a half-hour he was at the depot, and in another fifteen minutes speeding out of New Bedford on his way to Boston.
He had had but one anxiety—that Mr. Stone might be going up to Boston too. But, once relieved of this apprehension, he settled back, and for the first time in twelve hours had a mi
nute in which to ask himself who he was, and what he was about. Adventure had followed so fast upon adventure that he was in a more or less dazed condition, and felt as little capable of connecting event with event as if he had been asked to recall the changing pictures of a kaleidoscope. That affair of the packet, now, was it or was it not serious, and would he ever know what it meant or how it turned out?
Like a child who had been given a pebble, and told to throw it over the wall, he had thrown and run, giving a shout of warning, it is true, but not knowing, nor ever likely to know, where the stone had fallen, or what it was meant to do. Then this new commission on which he was bent—was it in any way connected with the other, or merely the odd result of his being in the right place at the right moment? He was inclined to think the latter. And yet how odd it was that one doubtful errand should be followed by another, in a town no larger than New Bedford, forcing him from scene to scene, till he found himself speeding toward the city he least desired to enter, and from which he had the most to fear!
But brooding over a case like this brings small comfort. He felt that he had been juggled with, but he neither knew by whose hand nor in what cause. If the hand was that of Providence, why he had only to go on following the beck of the moment, while if it was that of Fate, the very uselessness of struggling with it was apparent at once. Poor reasoning, perhaps, but no other offered, and satisfied that whatever came his intentions were above question, he settled himself at last for a nap, of which he certainly stood in good need. When he awoke he was in Boston.
The first thing he did was to show his list of addresses and inquire into what quarter they would lead him. To his surprise he found it to be the fashionable quarter. Two of them were names of well-known club-houses, a third that of a first-class restaurant, and the fourth that of a private house on Commonwealth Avenue. Heigho! and he was dressed like a tramp, or nearly so!
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 130
