Mrs. Carshaw focused him again through her gold-rimmed eye-glasses. “Crazy?” she questioned calmly. “Not a bit of it – merely an old woman bargaining for her son. Rex would not have done it. After thrashing you he would have left you to the law, and, were the law to step in, you would surely be ruined. I, on the other hand, do not scruple to compound a felony – that is what my lawyers call it. My extravagance and carelessness have contributed to encumber Rex’s estates with a heavy mortgage. If I provide his wife with a dowry which pays off the mortgage and leaves her a nice sum as pin-money, I shall have done well.”

“Half a million! I – I repudiate your statements. Even if I did not, I have no such sum at command.”

“Yes, you have, or will have, which is the same thing. Shall I give you details of the Costa Rica cotton concession, arranged between you, and Jacob, and Helen Tower? They’re here. As for repudiation, perhaps I have hurried matters. Permit me to go through my story at some length, quoting chapter and verse.”

She spread open her papers again, after having folded them.

“Stop this wretched farce,” he almost screamed, for her coolness broke up his never too powerful nervous system. “If – I agree – what guarantee is there – ”

“Ah! now you’re talking reasonably. I can ensure the acceptance of my terms. First, where is Winifred?”

He hesitated. Here was the very verge of the gulf. Any admission implied the truth of Mrs. Carshaw’s words. She did not help him. He must take the plunge without any further impulsion. But the Senator’s nerve was broken. They both knew it.

“At Gateway House, East Orange,” he said sullenly. “I must tell you that my – my brother is a dare-devil. Better leave me to – ”

“I am glad you have told the truth,” she interrupted. “She is not at Gateway House now. Rex and a detective were there last night. There was a fight. Your brother, a resourceful scoundrel evidently, carried her off. You must find him and her. A train leaves for New York in half an hour. Come back with me and help look for her. It will count toward your regeneration.”

He glanced at his watch abstractedly. He even smiled in a sickly way as he said:

“You timed your visit well.”

“Yes. A woman has intuition, you know. It takes the place of brains. I shall await you in the hall. Now, don’t be stupid, and think of revolvers, and poisons, and things. You will end by blessing me for my interference. Will you be ready in five minutes?”

She sat in the lounge, and soon saw some baggage descending. Then Meiklejohn joined her. She went to the office and asked for a telegraph form. The Senator had followed.

“What are you going to do?” he asked suspiciously.

“I’m wiring Rex to say that you and I are traveling to New York together, and advising him to suspend operations until we arrive. That will be helpful. You will not be tempted to act foolishly, and he will not do anything to prejudice your future actions.”

He gave her a wrathful glance. Mrs. Carshaw missed no point. A man driven to desperation might be tempted to bring about an “accident” if he fancied he could save himself in that way. But, clever as a mother scheming for her son’s welfare proved herself, there was one thing she could not do. Neither she nor any other human being can prevent the unexpected from happening occasionally. Sound judgment and astute planning will often gain a repute for divination; yet the prophet is decried at times. Steingall had discovered this, and Mrs. Carshaw experienced it now.

It chanced that Mick the Wolf, lying in Gateway House on a bed of pain, his injuries aggravated by the struggle with the detective, and his temper soured by Rachel Craik’s ungracious ministrations, found his thoughts dwelling on the gentle girl who had forgotten her own sorrows and tended him, her enemy.

Such moments come to every man, no matter how vile he may be, and this lorn wolf was a social castaway from whom, during many years, all decent-minded people had averted their faces. His slow-moving mind was apt to be dominated by a single idea. He understood enough of the Costa Rican project to grasp the essential fact that there was money in it for all concerned, and money honestly earned, if honesty be measured by the ethics of the stock manipulator.

He realized, too, that neither Voles nor Rachel Craik could be moved by argument, and he rightly estimated Fowle as a weak-minded nonentity. So he slowly hammered out a conclusion, and, having appraised it in his narrow circle of thought, determined to put it into effect.

An East Orange doctor, who had received his instructions from the police, paid a second visit to Mick the Wolf shortly before the hour of Mrs. Carshaw’s arrival in Atlantic City.

“Well, how is the arm feeling now?” he said pleasantly, when he entered the patient’s bedroom.

The answer was an oath.

“That will never do,” laughed the doctor. “Cheerfulness is the most important factor in healing. Ill-temper causes jerky movements and careless – ”

“Oh, shucks,” came the growl. “Say, listen, boss! I’ve been broke up twice over a slip of a girl. I’ve had enough of it. The whole darn thing is a mistake. I want to end it, an’ I don’t give a hoorah in Hades who knows. Just tell her friends that if they look for her on board the steamer Wild Duck, loadin’ at Smith’s Pier in the East River, they’ll either find her or strike her trail. That’s all. Now fix these bandages, for my arm’s on fire.”

The doctor wisely put no further questions. He dressed the wounded limb and took his departure. A policeman in plain clothes, hiding in a neighboring barn, saw him depart and hailed him: “Any news, Doc?”

“Yes,” was the reply. “If my information is correct you’ll not be kept there much longer.”

He motored quickly to the police-station. Within the hour Carshaw, with frowning face and dreams of wreaking physical vengeance on the burly frame of Voles, was speeding across New York with Steingall in his recovered car. He simply hungered for a personal combat with the man who had inflicted such sufferings on his beloved Winifred.

The story told by Polly Barnard, and supplemented by Petch, revealed very clearly the dastardly trick practised by Voles the previous evening, while the dodge of smearing out two of the figures on the automobile’s license plate explained the success attained in traversing the streets unnoticed by the police.

Steingall was inclined to theorize.

“The finding of the car puzzled me at first, I admit,” he said. “Now, assuming that Mick the Wolf has not sent us off on a wild-goose chase, the locality of the steamer explains it. Voles drove all the way to the East Side, quitted the car in the neighborhood of the pier, deposited Miss Bartlett on board the vessel under some plausible pretext, and actually risked the return journey into the only part of New York where the missing auto might not be noticed at once. He’s a bold rogue, and no mistake.”

But Carshaw answered not. The chief glanced at him sideways, and smiled. There was a lowering fire in his companion’s eyes that told its own story. Thenceforward, the run was taken in silence. But Steingall had decided on his next move. When they neared Smith’s Pier Carshaw wished to drive straight there.

“Nothing of the sort,” was the sharp official command. “We have failed once. Perhaps it was my fault. This time there shall be no mistakes. Turn along the next street to the right. The precinct station is three blocks down.”

Somewhat surprised by Steingall’s tone, the other obeyed. At the station-house a policeman, called from the men’s quarters, where he was quietly reading and smoking, stated that he was on duty in the neighborhood between eight o’clock the previous evening and four o’clock that morning. He remembered seeing a car, similar to the one standing outside, pass about 9.15 P.M. It contained two people, he believed, but could not be sure, as the screens were raised owing to the rain. He did not see the car again; some drunken sailors required attention during the small hours.

The local police captain and several men in plain clothes were asked to assemble quietly on Smith’s Pier. A message was sent to the river police, and a launch requisitioned to patrol near the Wild Duck.

Finally, Steingall, who was a born strategist, and whose long experience of cross-examining counsel rendered him wary before he took irrevocable steps in cases such as this, where a charge might fail on unforeseen grounds, made inquiries from a local ship’s chandler as to the Wild Duck, her cargo, and her destination.

There was no secret about her. She was loading with stores for Costa Rica. The consignees were a syndicate, and both Carshaw and Steingall recognized its name as that of the venture in which Senator Meiklejohn was interested.

“Do you happen to know if there is any one on board looking after the interests of the syndicate?” asked the detective.

“Yes. A big fellow has been down here once or twice. He’s going out as the manager, I guess. His name was – let me see now – ”

“Voles?” suggested Steingall.

“No, that wasn’t it. Oh, I’ve got it – Vane, it was.”

Carshaw, dreadfully impatient, failed to understand all this preliminary survey; but the detective had no warrant, and ship’s captains become crusty if their vessels are boarded in a peremptory manner without justification. Moreover, Steingall quite emphatically ordered Carshaw to remain on the wharf while he and others went on board.

“You want to strangle Voles, if possible,” he said. “From what I’ve heard of him he would meet the attempt squarely, and you two might do each other serious injury. I simply refuse to permit any such thing. You have a much more pleasant task awaiting you when you meet the young lady. No one will say a word if you hug her as hard as you like.”

Carshaw, agreeing to aught but delay, promised ruefully not to interfere. When the river police were at hand a nod brought several powerfully built officers closing in on the main gangway of the Wild Duck. The police-captain, in uniform, accompanied Steingall on board.

A deck hand hailed them and asked their business.

“I want to see the captain,” said the detective.

“There he is, boss, lookin’ at you from the chart-house now.”

They glanced up toward a red-faced, hectoring sort of person who regarded them with evident disfavor. Some ships, loading for Central American ports at out-of-the-way wharves, do not want uniformed police on their decks.

The two climbed an iron ladder. Men at work in the forehold ceased operations and looked up at them. Their progress was followed by many interested eyes from the wharf. The captain glared angrily. He, too, had noted the presence of the stalwart contingent near the gangway, nor had he missed the police boat.

“What the – ” he commenced; but the detective’s stern question stopped an outburst.

“Have you a man named Voles or Vane on board?”

“Mr. Vane – yes.”

“Did he bring a young woman to this ship late last night?”

“I don’t see – ”

“Let me explain, captain. I’m from the detective bureau. The man I am inquiring for is wanted on several charges.”

The steady official tone caused the skipper to think. Here was no cringing foreigner or laborer to be brow-beaten at pleasure.

“Well, I’m – ” he growled. “Here, you,” roaring at a man beneath, “go aft and tell Mr. Vane he’s wanted on the bridge.”

The messenger vanished.

“I assume there is a young lady on board?” went on Steingall.

“I’m told so. I haven’t seen her.”

“Surely you know every one who has a right to be on the ship?”

“Guess that’s so, mister, an’ who has more right than the daughter of the man who puts up the dough for the trip? Strikes me you’re makin’ a hash of things. But here’s Mr. Vane. He’ll soon put you where you belong.”

Advancing from the after state-rooms came Voles. He was looking at the bridge, but the police-captain was hidden momentarily by the chart-room. He gazed at Steingall with bold curiosity. He had a foot on the companion ladder when he heard a sudden commotion on the wharf. Turning, he saw Fowle, livid with terror, writhing in Carshaw’s grasp.

Then Voles stood still. The shades of night were drawing in, but he had seen enough to give him pause. Perhaps, too, other less palpable shadows darkened his soul at that moment.

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.