Mrs. Winslow got to the counter in two or three quick jumps or starts, and asked, husky with rage, "I – I just want to know which one of you old straws sent that box to me?"
"Box to
you
!" jerked out Amanda, the next less ancient of the Misses Grim, who had just entered and at once stopped stock still to catch Mrs. Winslow's remark; "box to you? Tush! – box to nobody!" and she too sidled in behind the counter to reinforce, and tremble with, her very old sister.
"Oh, you can't play your innocence on me!" retorted Mrs. Winslow very violently. "You wear very white collars, and very black caps and very straight dresses, and look very saintly, but you're just three old witches; that's what you are!"
"Pooh, pooh!" snorted Tabitha and Amanda hysterically.
"Pooh, pooh! if you like; but if I find out which one of you sent that box, I'll – I'll shake every bone in her old body into a match!" shouted Mrs. Winslow, dancing up and down against the counter and working her fingers savagely.
"Match?" responded Hannah, the least ancient and most fiery of the three virgins, and who entered at this critical moment; "match indeed! you're a match for anything villainous!" and then she too trotted behind the counter to throw the weight of her presence into the conflict.
By this time the interested customers had gathered around, and people from the street, noticing the unwonted enthusiasm awakened in the Washington Hall restaurant, were rapidly collecting upon the outside and flattening their curious noses against the intervening panes.
Mrs. Winslow could no more control herself than could the old maids, and quickened by the presence of the increasing crowd, burst into a screaming demand for the person who sent the "dead" beet to her.
"Dead beat! – ha, ha, ha!" laughed the three sisters convulsively, at once realizing the appropriateness of the joke and excitedly enjoying it; "dead beat, eh? we didn't do it!" "But," added Hannah, maliciously, "if you do find the person as did send it, Mrs. Winslow, and will send 'em around, we'll board 'em for a month free!"
There was war, direful war, imminent; and no one could imagine what might have resulted had the conflict of tongues culminated in a conflict of hands. But to have seen the three ancient, prim, and trembling women on the one side, and the ponderous, though handsome Mrs. Winslow on the other – the old maids either with arms akimbo or with hands firmly clenched upon the counter's edge as if to compel restraint, their bodies weaving back and forth, their heads bobbing up and down, and their stray frills and curls wildly dancing as if each particular hair was in a mad ecstasy of its own; and Mrs. Winslow, upon her side of the counter, in a perfect frenzy of excitement, stamping her feet, jumping backward and forward, bringing her clenched hand down upon the counter with terrible force for a woman, and shaking it furiously at the agitated row of old maids, would be to have witnessed a marvellous improvement upon any form of the Punch and Judy show ever exhibited.
Bristol saw that unless they were separated he would become implicated in a case of assault and battery, and after great effort pacified the women sufficiently to enable him to pilot his landlady out of the restaurant, through the streets and finally into her own apartments, where she passed the remainder of the dreary day in weeping, storms of baffled rage, or protracted applications to the spirits which can be controlled, whether one is a spiritualist or not, so long as money lasts and total prohibition is not enforced.
CHAPTER XXIII
Cast down. – "Trifles." – A charitable Offering. – Dreariness. – Going Crazy. – An interrupted Seance. – A new Form of the Devil. – The Red-herring Expedition and its Result. – A mad Dutchman. – Desolation. – An order for a Coffin. – The sympathizing Undertaker, Mr. Boxem.
MRS. WINSLOW now began to show great perturbation of spirits. In conversation with my detectives, who endeavored to cheer her up and lead her to regard these surprises as mere jokes not worth any person's notice, she constantly argued the opposite, and thus arguing, conjured up countless possibilities of harm, gradually working herself into that condition of mind where every little unusual noise or movement of any person in the building or upon the street was a signal for some querulous inquiry or complaint.
She was also very much worried concerning her suit, and went about among the Spiritualists seeking their advice and encouragement, and giving and receiving a good deal of scandal concerning the case. From one she would hear that Lyon was employing certain other mediums in his behalf, and that she had better look out for them. Another would inform her that Lyon had several other mistresses, among them a Miss Susie Roberts, and a Madame La Motte, both Spiritualists and mediums, from whom Lyon intended to prove her bad character, and whom she, in turn, vowed she would have subpœnaed in her own behalf, and impeach their testimony through what she could compel them to admit of both themselves and Lyon. At other places she learned that these persecutions were Lyon's work entirely, or rather, the work of his agents, principal among whom were the two ladies mentioned. And, in fact, wherever she went she heard or found something to give her uneasiness or cause her unrest.
"Yes," she said sadly to my operatives, "I can't stand this sort of thing much longer."
"Oh, nonsense!" rejoined Bristol; "you haven't been hurt, have you?"
"No; but I can't tell when I shall be. That's what I can't bear."
"But I thought you were a woman of too great force of character to allow trifles to trouble you," exclaimed Fox tauntingly.
"Trifles!" said she hotly; "trifles! Is expecting every moment to be murdered, or blown up, a trifle? Is fearing that everything you taste will poison you, or everything you touch do you deadly harm, a trifle?"
"People will think you deserve to be annoyed if you show them you are annoyed," argued Fox.
"I have long since ceased to care what people think. Sometimes I am sure I hate every human being; and I do believe the more the world hates me, the more money I make. If these things are not stopped soon, I tell you," she continued in a tone of voice that seemed to say they could stay the annoyances if they would, "I'll go to St Louis and attend to my cases there!"
This opened the eyes of my operatives, and they simultaneously conveyed the intimation to each other that careful working might secure some information about any St. Louis cases the woman might have which would be desirable; and in a short time, by gradually leading Mrs. Winslow on, they discovered that the brazen adventuress, according to her own story, had pending no less than seven cases in the Circuit Court at St. Louis, every one of them being suits on some trivial, trumped-up charge.
It seemed fated that Mrs. Winslow should leave Rochester, if her remaining depended upon these mysterious offerings ceasing, for while they were yet in conversation upon the subject, a colored porter called with a great basket-load of provisions, and without a word, after spreading a newspaper upon the carpet, began unloading his store.
"In heaven's name, who sent you here with those?" she entreated of the colored gentleman.
"It's all right; it's all right," he said soothingly, and winking hard at my operatives.
"But it isn't all right; it's all wrong!" she retorted, warming.
"Guess not, missus; lemme see: Quart split peas, quart beans, one punking, jug m'lasses, 'n a mackerel. Done got 'em all, sure!"
"Where did they come from, you black imp?" the woman demanded, advancing threateningly.
He grabbed his basket quickly, and, slowly retreating towards the door, winked again very knowingly at Bristol and Fox, tapped his forehead and shook his head deploringly, and then nodded towards Mrs. Winslow, very plainly saying in pantomime, "Poor thing! – badly demented!" and, as Mrs. Winslow, in the excess of her anger, made a dive at him, he sprang back through the door, ejaculating, "Lo'd,
ain't
she crazy, though!" and made good his escape, laughing with that expression of complete enjoyment which only an Ethiopian can give.
Mrs. Winslow was now thoroughly convinced that the two men who had been her constant companions of late had had something to do with annoying her, and she cunningly followed the negro to the store where he was employed, where she at once sharply questioned the proprietor, who told her just as sharply that only a few minutes before, a ministerial-looking man, claiming to be city missionary for some church up-town, called and purchased the goods, remarking that they were for some crazy woman living in the block next to Meech's opera-house, whom he had just visited, and found to be possessed of the peculiar mania that she would receive no provisions save in full dress in the presence of her physicians, and that it was his desire to so humor her. So he had entrusted the errand to the colored man, who had carried out the instructions given him; and that that was all there was about it.
When she returned crestfallen to the apartments, and Bristol and Fox had heard her story, they so derided it, claiming that the groceryman had fallen in love with her and invented the story upon the spur of the moment, fearing to disclose his languishing affection, she now believed that they were innocent of complicity in the matter and seemed to lapse into a bewildered sort of condition, where she would wander about the rooms, suspiciously pass and repass my operatives and searchingly scrutinize their faces, and for long periods stand at the dreary window peering into the street as if into a dead blank, never noticing the scurrying snow-flakes which were coming as a silent prelude to another winter, and only occasionally breaking the silence by murmuring, "Crazy? crazy? Yes, I
shall
become so if these terrible things are not stopped!"
But Mrs. Winslow had seen too much of life and was too hard a citizen generally to be terribly borne down by these manifestations for any great length of time, though they completely overpowered her at their occurrence, and she was allowed to become quite cheery before being favored with another materialization, which came in the following manner.
They were having a pleasant little seance in the rooms one evening soon after the colored grocery porter had accused Mrs. Winslow of being crazy, and the several ladies and gentlemen collected there were engaged in communing with the Spiritualistic heaven in the old and very common table-rapping method. They were, as a rule, lank, lean people, the ladies wearing short hair, and the gentlemen wearing long hair. This, with a few other affectations and irregularities, was nothing against them, had it not been equally as true that, according to my operatives' subsequent inquiries, every member of this company was either living in open adultery or practising all manner of lewdness without even the convenient cloak of an assumption or pretension that the marriage relations existed. But, good or bad as they were, they were at the threshold of heaven, and had very appropriately darkened the room to get as near to it as possible without being seen, and only the faintest possible jet flickered in the chandelier. They had all, save Mrs. Winslow, been served with a message, and she was now the inquirer, solemnly asking of another medium some information from the dear departed from over the river.
"Shall I soon receive word from an absent friend?" – (evidently meaning Le Compte, who had disappeared a month or two previous). Three affirmative raps followed.
"Shall I succeed in my case against Lyon?" The spirits were certain that she would.
"Shall I be rewarded for all my trouble?" she asked, waiting tremblingly for an answer.
To this inquiry three thundering raps were heard at the door.
What could it mean?
The members of the little circle were completely unnerved. And it was not strange either. Here were nearly a dozen people closely huddled in the centre of a room so dark that only the dim, indistinct outline of any person, or thing, could be seen in the ghostly gloaming. They believed, pretended they believed, or acquiesced in the belief or pretension, that they were in direct communication with the spirit-land.
In the most ridiculous condition of mind which any person might enter into such a performance, the secrecy and mysteriousness of the seance, the hushed silence, the darkness, and that tension of the mind caused by a constant expectation of some startling manifestation, will compel in the most sceptical mind a strange feeling of solemnity akin to awe; so that when Mrs. Winslow's last inquiry was answered so pat, as well as with such an alarming loudness, the entire company sprang to their feet, and on this occasion there was genuine surprise in the faces of my detectives.
Bang, bang, bang! came the second series of raps, which promised Mrs. Winslow she should be "rewarded for all her trouble."
But the answer, in the way it came, didn't seem to satisfy her. Somebody stepped to the chandelier and turned on the light, which showed all the company to have been considerably startled; but the hostess was white from fear.
"Won't
somebody
see what new form of the devil has been sent here to annoy me?" she asked passionately.
Fox, as "somebody," stepped briskly to the door and turned the key just as the first "Bang!" of another series of raps was begun, and opening it quickly discovered a dapper young fellow with a big black bottle held by the neck in his hand, which was raised for the purpose of giving the door bang number two.
In response to Fox's loud and sharp inquiry as to what on earth was wanted, he reversed the position of the bottle with the dexterity of a bar-tender, took from the floor a huger basket than that brought by the colored porter, and slipping into the room, nodded familiarly to Mrs. Winslow, and then coolly to the company, after which he quietly proceeded to unload his store.
"Great heavens!" said she despairingly, "I
don't
want those things left here. I have no need for anything of the kind. I take my meals at the Osborne House!"
"Gettin' 'toney' lately!" responded the intruder with a shrug, piling the packages up neatly in one corner and taking no heed of her expressed wish concerning them.
There was no response to this, and he resumed in a light and airy tone: "Times has changed, Mrs. – ; eh? What
was
it at Memphis and Helena, anyhow?"
This reference to the less aristocratic, though quite as respectable, vocation of a female camp-follower, though it caused the woman to change color rapidly, only brought from her the remark, "I don't know what you mean, sir! I'll get even with whoever is responsible for this outrage" – here she glared around upon the company as if to ascertain whether any one present was guilty – "if it costs me a thousand dollars!"
The new-comer only smiled sarcastically at this and checked off his packages, concluding the operation by carefully counting two dozen red herrings, whose aroma was sufficient to announce their presence if he had not exhibited them at all; while members of the company looked about them and at each other as if for some explanation of the strange proceeding.
Finally, Mrs. Winslow, with a mighty effort to restrain herself, advanced and asked the young man if he would not please give her the name of the person to whom she was indebted for the articles.
He arose, and smiling blandly, remarked, "You didn't used to be so particular about presents and such things!" Then he added with a meaning leer: "At Helena and St. Louis, ye know, old girl!"
"Old girl!" the ladies all screamed. "Why what
does
this mean, Mrs. Winslow?"
"Nothing, nothing!" she replied hastily; and then she hurried the too talkative young fellow away, and came back into the room with a show of gayety. But it broke up the little party, and soon after the ladies, with frigid excuses about not having very much time, and the gentlemen, with peculiar glances out of the corners of their eyes towards the woman who had been so familiarly termed an "old girl," took their departure, leaving Bristol, Fox, Mrs. Winslow and the melancholy pile of packages surmounted by aromatic red herrings in a state of solemn, moody silence.
Bristol was first to break the stillness, which he did by asking rather testily:
"You think Fox and I have had something to do with this, don't you?"
She looked at him a moment as if she would read his innermost thoughts, and replied: "No, I don't! It comes from some of those strumpets of mediums, and I would give a good deal – a good deal, mind you, Bristol! – to know who it was. I'd – I'd – "
"What would you do?" asked Fox, putting her on her mettle for a savage answer.
"I would either burn them out, poison them, push them over the falls, or lie in wait for them and shoot them!"
Mrs. Winslow said this with as much sincerity and coolness as if giving an estimate on any ordinary business transaction, and evidently meant it.
"Oh, you wouldn't kill anybody, Winslow," replied Fox airily.
"Wouldn't I, though, Mr. Fox?" she rejoined with the old glitter in her eyes and paleness upon her upper lip that had at an earlier period worried the Rev. Mr. Bland; "wouldn't I? If you had fifty thousand dollars in your trunk, I would kill you, appropriate the money, cut you up and pack you in the trunk and ship you to the South – or some other hot climate by the next express!"
She was just as earnest about the remark as she would have been in carrying out the act; and after Fox had congratulated himself, both aloud cheerfully and in his own mind very thankfully, that neither his trunk, or for that matter his imagination, contained any such gorgeous sum, he went to his own room for the night, leaving the very excited Mrs. Winslow and the very calm Mr. Bristol to contemplate the groceries and each other.
After a few minutes' brown study she suddenly turned to her companion with: "Bristol, you and I are pretty good friends, aren't we?"
"Certainly," he replied.
"And haven't I always treated you pretty well?"
"Yes; with one exception."
"What is that?"
"The sleep-walking you did in my room."
"Oh, that's nothing, Bristol. Never happened but once, and won't occur again. Otherwise I have treated you pretty well, haven't I?"
Bristol felt compelled to confess that she had.
"Well, then," she continued wheedlingly, "will you do me a favor?"
"What is it?"
"I want you to take a walk with me."
"Pretty late, Winslow, pretty late; nearly ten o'clock," replied the detective, looking at his watch.
"The later the better," she replied earnestly. "I want to use those herrings."
"Use those herrings! Why, there are at least two dozen. How on earth will you use them all?"
"Some of these humbug mediums," replied Mrs. Winslow in a style of expression that showed her to be very familiar with the Spiritualists, "or old Lyon himself, have sent me these things. I'm going to adorn the door knob of every one of their places with a string of herrings. In that way I'll hit the right one sure. Come, won't you go?"
Bristol saw that the woman would go anyhow, and fearing that she might get into some trouble that would cause her arrest and thus expose him and Bristol to public notice, which a capable detective will always avoid, consented to accompany the woman, which so pleased her that she immediately sent out for brandy, and not only imbibed an inordinate amount of it herself, but also pressed it upon Bristol unsparingly.
Her mind seemed filled with the idea that Lyon had become the "affinity" of nearly every female medium of prominence in the city in order to further his designs against her; and to remind them that they were watched, she had Bristol write "Lyon-La Motte," "Lyon-Roberts," "Lyon- ," etc., upon about a half-dozen couples of herrings, and upon all the rest, save those intended for the Misses Grim, which were labelled "Tabitha, Amanda, and Hannah," she had written the names of the different ladies who, in her imagination, had supplanted her, and tied all the herrings so labelled together with one very dilapidated herring marked "Lyon." It is needless to say that the latter bundle of sarcasm was intended for the ornamentation of Mr. Lyon's residence.
Bristol felt like a very bad thief, and Mrs. Winslow acted like a very foolish one. The moment they gained the street she began a series of absurd performances that well-nigh distracted Bristol and greatly increased the danger of police surveillance. She laughed hysterically, chuckled, and expressed her delight in a noisy effort to repress it, until the tears would roll down her face. Occasionally they would meet or pass parties who knew her, who would say to companions, in the tone and manner with which they would have probably spoken of other sensations, "There's the Winslow!" when she would shrink and shudder up to Bristol's side, begging for the shelter and protection of his capacious cloak. Again, imagining she saw somebody following them, or was sure that loungers lingering in deserted doorways or at the entrance to dark hallways or alleys were detectives on their trail, she would give the patient Bristol such nudges as nearly took his breath away, and, at his lively protest, would whimper and tremble like a querulous child.
Their first work was to be done on State Street, near Main, and when they had arrived at a certain hallway, Mrs. Winslow insisted that Bristol should accompany her to the rooms which she desired to decorate. This he flatly refused to do, when she began moaning something about want of spirit, and then, with a sudden gathering of the admirable quality for her own use, stole quietly up stairs and in a moment after came plunging down, as if the inmates of the entire block had turned out to give her chase. But this was not the case, and the expedition progressed without any developments of note, Mrs. La Motte, Miss Susie Roberts, and the Misses Grim being properly remembered, until they arrived at Mr. Lyon's residence, some little distance from the thickly settled portions of the city.
The house was one of the rambling, moss-covered buildings of ancient style and structure, and was set back from the road some distance among a score of trees quite as grand and ancient as the mansion itself; and the old pile did have a gloomy appearance to the adventurous couple that paused breathlessly before the gates.
"Bristol," said Mrs. Winslow shiveringly, "do you know that sometimes, when I see that great black pile up there, I'm glad he didn't marry me?"
"Why?" her companion impatiently asked. He was getting cold and tired, and was in no condition to appreciate maudlin melancholy.
"Because I'm sure I'd die in the old rack-o'-bones of a place; and besides that, I'm sure there are spooks there!"
"Pooh, pooh!" sneered Bristol angrily; "go along and attend to your business, or I'll go back and leave you!"
Thus admonished, the sentimental lady proceeded with her work.
For some reason the gate was very hard to open, and considerable time was consumed in getting into the grounds. Then it was a long walk to the house. Bristol anxiously watched the woman move slowly along the broad walk until she disappeared in the shadows which surrounded the house and the darkness of the night; and it seemed an age to him, as he stamped his feet as hard as he dare upon the stone pavement and whipped his hands about his shoulders to drive away the chilliness which he found creeping on.
He heard her footsteps first, then saw her emerge from the gloom, and finally saw her stop as if to listen. He also listened very intently, and thought he heard somebody moving about the house; and was immediately satisfied of the correctness of his hearing by noticing that Mrs. Winslow suddenly turned towards the road and made remarkably good time to the gate, which, feeling sure of trouble, he made strenuous efforts to open.
"For heaven's sake, Bristol," she gasped, "why
don't
you open this gate. I'll be eaten up with the dogs, and we'll both be caught!"
The last clause of Mrs. Winslow's remark roused Bristol to a vigorous exercise of his muscle. He tugged away at the gate, shook it, threw himself against it from one side, and his companion threw herself against it from the other side; but all in vain. Not a moment was to be lost. Lights were seen flashing to and fro in the great mansion, angry voices came to them, with the by nowise cheering short, gruff, savage responses of loosened bulldogs, and in a moment more the front door was passed by two men and as many dogs that came dashing out in full pursuit.
Matters at the gate were approaching a crisis. The gate could not be opened, and Mrs. Winslow must pass it or get captured.
"Climb or die!" urged Bristol, reaching through the pickets of the gate, which was a high one, and lifting on the portly form of the excited woman.
"I will, Bristol!" she returned, with a gasp.
And she did climb!
It was best that she did so, as a good deal of trouble was coming down that brick walk like a small hurricane, and it would logically strike her in a position and from a direction that would not enable her to respond; and if either or both of those dogs had been able to have grasped the situation, partially impaled as she was upon the pickets, the fascinating Mrs. Winslow would have fallen an easy prey.
She was very clumsy about it, but in her desperation she in some way managed to scale the gate, leaving a good portion of her skirts and dress flying signals of distress upon the pickets, and finally fell into Bristol's arms. It was a moment when silk and fine raiment were as bagatelle in the estimate of chances for escape, and it was but the work of an instant for Bristol to tear her like a ship from her fastenings and make a grand rush towards home.
Those portions of Mrs. Winslow's garments which were left flaunting upon the gate not only set the dogs wild, but served to detain them. The men were also halted a minute by the natural curiosity they awakened, after which they made a furious onslaught upon the gate, that only yielded after sufficient time had elapsed to enable the culprits to get some distance ahead, when the men and dogs started pell-mell down the street after them.
Bristol fortunately remembered that when they were nearing Lyon's house, he had noticed that the door leading to an alley in the rear of a pretentious residence had been blown open and was then swaying back and forth in the wind. With the advantage in the chase given by the dog's criticism upon Mrs. Winslow's wearing apparel and the men's hinderance at the gate, they were able to seek shelter here, which they did with the utmost alacrity, fastening the gate behind them, where they tremblingly listened to the pursuers tearing by.
Mrs. Winslow insisted on immediately rushing out and taking the other direction, but Bristol, feeling sure that the party would go but a short distance, held on to her until the two men returned with the dogs, swearing at their luck, and telling each other wonderful tales of burglaries that never took place, while Bristol thoughtfully put in the time by making Mrs. Winslow's skirts as presentable as possible, by the aid of the pins which every pr