University of Virginia Library

53. CHAPTER LIII.
THE WETHEREL WILL FOR SALE.

TWO or three days previous to Nestoria's adventure with Count Poloski,
Walter Lehming had received a startling visit from Edward Wetherel.

The usually collected and serious, if not downright sombre young man was
in a state of eager and cheerful exhilaration; he came running up Lehming's
stairway, rushed into his study without knocking, and tossed a billet to him
with the words, “Read that.”

Walter glanced over the bit of manuscript, and saw that it was an anonymous
letter addressed to Mr. Edward Wetherel, the writing in the fashion of
print, and the signature “Darkness.”

“The will exists,” he read. “It cuts you off with a shilling. You can
have it, if you will pay one hundred thousand dollars; otherwise it will be offered
to the other heirs, who will be sure to take it. If you accept, put an advertisement
in the `Herald,' saying, Terms agreeable, and signing your name.
Then I will instruct you how to open further communication with me.”

As Lehming read, his long, sallow, homely, but sweet face flushed deeply,
and when he had finished he looked up at Edward with an expression of deep
joy, a joy which he might not fully explain. If the letter were honest, if Edward
had not fabricated it himself (and Lehming did not think of that immediately),
then it appeared certain that the murderer of Judge Wetherel was
some commonplace, mercenary ruffian, and that this young man here present,
this connection and friend, was innocent.

“Here we have the assassin!” exclaimed Wetherel, pacing the room excitedly
and with countenance uplifted. “Here we have the bloody hand showing
itself. The question is how to seize it.”

“Wonderful!” replied Lehming, with an intonation of profound gratitude.
“But what is to be done?”

“I cannot pay this money,” continued Wetherel, halting with the bended
head and folded arms of reflection. “I am not the heir, if this document is
found; no, nor in any case. But I think myself justified in promising it.
Are we bound to keep the truth with murderers? Just think how easily this
wretch has baffled justice thus far. The authorities of Connecticut gave up
the search for him long ago, and I suppose wisely; the criminal was no doubt
beyond their jurisdiction before his crime was a day old. He came to New
York at once; he came instantly and instinctively to this sink of undisturbed
lawlessness; this letter proves almost positively that he is here to-day, and he
has probably been here all the while. Yet for three months our force—as the
police weakness sarcastically calls itself—has been pursuing him, or making
a show of pursuit. For three months I have been urging and bribing our detectives
and patrols to keep up the chase. Not a word have the drones, or
idiots, or scoundrels brought me that has been worthy of attention.”

“You speak very strongly,” said Lehming. “However, considering what
you have suffered, I don't wonder. Any man in your situation would suspect
a thousand things—”

“Yes, I do speak strongly,” interrupted Wetherel. “I am embittered and
enraged. I sometimes think that half our organization of justice, from the
highest officials to the lowest, is in league with crime, or afraid of it. Just
look at the way things go in this single matter of homicide. No murderer is
ever found out who shows forethought in his sin, or common prudence in hiding
himself. And when a man is caught red-handed, he is not promptly and
honestly tried, or he is not punished. There are nearly thirty assassins in our
jails now, whom the law apparently dares not lay hands on, or covertly desires
to save. It is uncivilized, horrible to all upright souls, terrifying to all
good citizens. There is a paralysis of justice and of public morality. The
individual is left unprotected; he must defend himself from crime by his own
strength and cunning; he must do as he would in Calabria or the Isle of Murderers.
He cannot afford scruples in dealing with the criminal classes. Much
as I hate and despise deception, I must personally tell this villain a lie, and
perhaps many lies, in the hope of entrapping him. I dare not intrust the
work to any one else, for fear that it will not be done faithfully and rightly, or
not done at all. All my confidence in the ability or the purity of our correctional
system is gone. Besides, whatever else may happen, I must clear my
own name. I must!” he added, with a passion of utterance which revealed
long and acute suffering under the imputation of guilt.

“Do as you must,” said Lehming, after a pause of painful deliberation, for
any and every fashion of falsehood was hateful to him. “When you have
learned more, let me know if I can help you.”

So, under the pressure of what seemed relentless necessity, an advertisement
of “words deceiving” was inserted in the “Herald,” informing “Darkness”
that his terms were agreeable. Then came another letter; it offered a
meeting, but not with Wetherel; some less formidable messenger must be
sent, bearing the money; the place indicated was a wharf near the Battery,
and the hour three in the morning.

“I will go,” volunteered Lehming, after Edward had read the note to
him. “But what about the filthy lucre? What sort of ghost or simulacrum
of it can I carry? I must have something to hold in my hands while I talk
with this wretch and try to divine who he is.”

“Counterfeit bills would answer best,” muttered Edward. “They could
be got from the police for this purpose. But it is horrible pitch to touch for
any purpose.”

“Let me have a simple package of waste paper,” said Lehming. “I can
do something with it. I can at least make sure that there is a man at the end
of this mysterious correspondence. Besides, there are possibilities. Chance
may favor me. I may recognize him, may follow him, may bring about an
arrest. Of course I can do nothing in the way of seizing him myself. You
know I can neither fight nor run. But Providence may help. At the very
least something will be gained. I shall be able to testify to a fact which will
go to show—your innocence.”

“To think that it should need showing!” groaned Wetherel. “But I
thank you. Only, do you consider that you risk violence? This may be a
mere trick to delude a man with money about him into a place where he can
be waylaid. This fellow, too, when he finds that the package is a fraud, may
assault you.”

“I will leave my watch and wallet at home,” replied Lehming. “As for
my poor little carcass, it is not of much account, and I will risk it. Some one
must go.”

So Lehming went, enveloped in an old loose cloak, and carrying under it
a large sealed package, which had such a preposterously overt air of shamming
great value that he was more than once tempted to throw it away. He
started at two in the morning, for he had of course decided that he must go on
foot to the rendezvous, and the preliminary throbbing of his anxious heart
told him that he would not be able to walk fast. The streets were deserted,
even brawlers and drunkards having sought refuge within doors from the keen
December air; and as he looked up and down the long avenues of silence,
bordered by monstrous walls which threw out not a gleam of light, he had an
impression as if he were traversing a necropolis. The only persons whom he
met were two or three isolated and nomadic policemen, who seemed to be engaged
in trying doors to see if they were locked. “I am doing their work for
them,” he thought somewhat bitterly, and passed them by without asking for
their assistance.

By times his mind leaped forward to the interview which awaited him, and
sought to fashion it into some shape which would be manageable to his powers.
His vivid imagination enabled him to struggle painfully with incidents which
had not yet happened, and to take anxious part in a dialogue which might
never be spoken. He was in the condition of a man who plays a game of
chess in his thoughts, striving to arrange an interminable series of moves in
such a fashion as to make them sure of success against every imaginable counterplay,
and fighting with an adversary who has even the unknown to aid him,
but who yet must be beaten. His game worked badly; he was not fitted for
the fencing of intrigue and for encounters with ruffians; and, knowing his own
weakness in such matters, he could not fancy himself as getting the better of
his antagonist. His supposititious controversies with the mysterious villain of
the Battery all ended, no matter how often he recommenced them and how
eagerly he bent his mind to them, in discomfiture. The incognito wormed out
secrets and divulged none; he secured the sealed package and discovered it
to be a sham; he failed to exhibit the will, and successfully hid his guilty
visage. Wearied at last with these confusing and disheartening forereachings,
Lehming struggled to clear his brain of them and to trust that the trial would
bring him inspiration.

“I will do the best I can,” he murmured. “And may Heaven help me,
as it sometimes does help the foolish.”

Then another troublous subject gradually invaded his mind, like a tide
stealing over a low and dikeless land, driving out of it all present life and confirming
the future as a waste. He was engaged in an enterprise which, if
completely successful, would prove the innocence of Edward Wetherel; and
one result, one morally certain result, of such a rehabilitation would be to give
Nestoria back to her betrothed lover. He himself felt sure of it, and that
surety was a dagger to him. He knew now, if he had never known it before,
that he loved the girl with all his heart and mind and strength. She had
never yet seemed to him, and indeed we might also say that she had never
really been, so beautiful, so sweet in her ways, so noble and pure and altogether
charming, as she appeared to his imagination in this momentous hour
when he was doing his feeble best to hand her over to another. He remembered
her smile—that tender starlight sparkle which had so often transmitted
to him messages of gratitude and friendship, and which had sometimes lighted
up the dusky abysses of his humility with glimmers of trembling hope. He recalled
her various expressions, her thoughtful face, her sorrowful face, her

face of cheer, her rare face of gayety, all her faces, all familiar to his soul, all
capable of appearing before his mind's eye at an instant's summons, or without
a summons. His meditations concerning her were not philosophical, nor
hardly intelligent. They were vision and emotion; he saw and felt, rather
than thought.

It was a farewell. He gave her up; he sacrificed himself, as he was accustomed
to do; he walked onward the quicker in order to hasten the sacrifice.
It was a most sorrowful struggle, and every moment or two his eyes took desperate
flights toward heaven in search of strength to bear it, dropping back
wearily to earth with no other help than a suffering sense of resignation. An
angel passing by might have seen a human dwarf striving to rejoice in the
hope that he was working out good and happiness for others, and meanwhile
wiping the tears from his cheeks. In this dolorous and sublime hour of renunciation
he would not forbid himself tears. He must have that feeble consolation,
and he felt that he was worthy of it. It was surely not much to obtain,
but he thanked God for it, so humble was he. “Oh, merciful Father,”
he whispered, “thanks, thanks, for tears!”

Perhaps a man is never so worthy of a woman as when, for her betterment
and in spite of the pleadings of his heart, he resigns her to another. The very
grief and meekness with which he lets go all claim to her brings him near to
that divine ideal of love which renders all and requires nothing. Lehming,
always purer of egoism than most human beings, was just now nearly fit, one
may dare to say, for translation.

Meanwhile his thoughts devoured the long way, as if they had been a chariot
of fire; and of a sudden he was surprised by discovering that he had
reached the Battery. The dark open space, snowless as yet and lighted by
few lamps, its apparent size increased by the breadth of the invisible river behind
it, seemed to him at first a daunting desert to approach. He paused a
moment, wondered whether he should be waylaid, and then once more set forward
steadfastly. Reaching the iron fence which then surrounded the Battery,
and which by night was closed to prevent scenes of disorder and dramas of crime,
he turned to the right and soon found the place of rendezvous. It was a small
open wharf, bare at the time of all lumbering of merchandise, and of course
jutting out into the sombre expanse of the North river. As he glanced along
its dim edge, feebly illuminated by a single lamp, he could at first see nothing
but ghostly outlines of shipping in the stream and a few distant lurid gleams
which indicated the position of Jersey City.

“This man means to sail to-morrow for Europe,” he said to himself as he
halted. “But will he come?”

Yes, he had come; there was a figure lying on the extreme verge of the
wharf; and, as Lehming approached, it rose to an erect position.