 | CHAPTER LIV.
THE MASK TORN OFF. The Wetherel affair |  |
54. CHAPTER LIV.
THE MASK TORN OFF.
The man who rose from the edge of the wharf to meet Lehming was wrapped
in a long, loose overcoat, furnished with a hood or capote which covered
his head and shadowed his visage.
Lehming did not recognize him; he could simply see that he was a tall
man—about as tall as Wetherel; all other peculiarities of figure were shrouded
turned his face a little toward the wharf lamp, he perceived that that face was
masked. The mask was a commonplace, grotesque affair, such as may be
seen grimacing unchangeably through any toyshop window, and such as children
buy to scare smaller comrades with. The nose was prodigious, the color
of the lumpish cheeks was gross and glaring, and the huge mouth was moulded
to counterfeit a clownish laugh. There was something preternaturally horrible
in the contrast between this leering, smirking simulacrum and the supposed
homicidal character of its wearer.
When within six or eight feet of the figure Lehming halted, and asked in a
voice which he could not quite steady, “Is this Darkness?”
“Yes,” replied the other. The utterance, like the shape, was unrecognizable.
There was now a moment of silence during which Lehming rallied his
thoughts and his strength for fresh speech, meanwhile listening to the lapping
of the waters at the base of the wharf, and noting also a dull, faint thumping
as of a boat beating against the timbers. “I come to you,” he resumed, “from
Mr. Edward Wetherel.”
“Very well,” responded the mask. There was no doubting or questioning;
the speaker had the air of being quite sure of the authenticity and good faith
of Lehming; it seemed probable that he might have recognized him.
“Have you the paper?” asked the dwarf, after another pause.
“What paper?” was the cautious answer.
Lehming, after pondering a moment over this reticence, inferred from it
that he must fully state his business, or the other would make no disclosures.
“I was sent here,” he said, “to receive from you the will of Judge Jabez
Wetherel, which you agreed to surrender to his nephew for one hundred thousand
dollars.”
“It is here,” replied the stranger, slightly touching his breast with one
hand, while the mask nodded and leered its immutable grimace, as if it were
some Mephistophelean spectator of the drama who scoffed and sneered at the
two human actors.
“Will you let me see the will—merely to make sure that you have it?”
asked Lehming.
The goblin visor shook a slight negative, and the hollow voice beneath
it muttered: “I must first see the money.”
There was a long and troubling silence, broken only by the swashing of
the ripples and the thumping of the unseen boat—two sounds which were very
strange as being audible on the verge of a great city, and very disquieting as
suggesting easy homicide and the secure escape of the criminal. The disguised
man did not turn; the boat behind and below him was evidently his and no
other's; at least, so he believed. Had he turned, he would have seen something
to give him alarm; he would have seen a face peering over the edge-beam,
with its eyes fixed on him. Lehming, while fumbling with his sealed
package and debating whether he should hold it forth, chanced to discover
this head. At first he thought that the mask had a comrade there, and in his
nervousness he involuntarily recoiled a pace. But in the next breath he saw
a hand rise before the mysterious head, with one finger laid across the lips, as
if enjoining silence. Then it occurred to him that perhaps the police were at
hand; that Wetherel might have thought it best to advise them of the interview;
that somehow or other justice had stumbled upon the trail of this misdoer.
At all events a crisis had come, and he must do his best to help it forward;
to see his peril. So he handed out his fraudful bundle, at the same time saying
in a louder voice than he had yet used, “Where is the will?”
“I must look at this first,” returned the unknown, beginning to tear off the
sealed envelope. It was natural enough that he should doubt whether a hundred
thousand dollars had been brought him in the night by an unattended
dwarf; only a very idiot of a rogue would believe in such an Arabian Nights
adventure without ocular evidence of its actuality. He moved a little nearer to
the wharf lamp, and continued to unroll the package with hands that shook
quite visibly, his visor meanwhile grinning its hideous paper gratulation. Meantime
the head behind him changed to a full figure, which stealthily grew up
on the extreme verge of the wharf, whatever noise it made being drowned by
the lapping of the water. Lehming tried not to look at it, for fear of warning
the mask. He felt sure now that a policeman, or perhaps a party of the police,
had watched the outgoings of this criminal and followed him to the rendezvous.
In great trepidation, and dreading by moments lest his throbbing heart should
beat him to the earth senseless, he dropped his eyes and awaited the result.
Slowly, with a deliberation indeed which seemed to risk all chance of success,
but steadily and without a sound that could reach the ear, the stranger
moved toward the mask until he was within less than ten feet of him. Then
he sprang, and instantly there was a furious struggle between the two, the one
striving to escape and the other to hold fast, and both gasping out short, hard
breaths loaded with curses. Lehming saw a sparkle between them as of drawn
steel, but could not distinguish which grasped it, nor whether a blow was
struck. Fearful, however, that the policeman would be hurt or overcome, he
advanced to give him aid. But at this moment a new figure appeared on the
scene, climbing up the dock and running toward the combatants. Lehming
had just time to notice that this man, like the first, was not in police garb, but
wore a short shaggy box-coat and slouched hat, when he heard some one mutter,
as if through clenched teeth, “Upset that little fellow!” Almost instantaneously,
and before he could think what the phrase meant, the last arrival
gave him a fisticuff which laid him prostrate. It was a terrible blow; it bereft
him of consciousness.
When he came to himself some time must have elapsed, for all was quiet
He lay still upon the wharf, just where he had fallen, with the lamp dimly shining
in his eyes. He was chilled through; his cloak had been thrown open, as
if to examine his clothing, and, as he afterwards discovered, his pockets were
turned inside out. Raising himself on one elbow, and lifting his bruised, aching,
dizzy head, he looked about him. At a little distance lay what seemed a
corpse. It was the man with the capote.
He rose, tottered toward this man, knelt by his side, and surveyed him attentively.
The leering, grinning mask was still on the face, giving a horrible
air of farce to this homicidal tragedy. It was not, however, fastened there,
but had evidently fallen off or been torn off, and then carelessly replaced, perhaps
in mockery. Lehming gently removed this painted ghost of hilarity,
and stared at the uncovered visage with an amazement which nearly drowned
his horror.
“Edward!” he exclaimed. “No, it is Poloski.”
Yes, the dead man who lay there, the man who had volunteered to surrender
the will of the murdered Judge Wetherel, was certainly Poloski.
“It is the finger of God,” continued Lehming, impressed by that wonder
apt to descend upon us when we do happen to see a great crime followed by
remarkable punishment.
“Now all is explained,” he resumed after a moment. “Nestoria mistook
this man for Edward. Ah, well, she will be happy. He is innocent.”
Meantime, he was gently opening the large coarse overcoat which enveloped
the fallen figure. A moisture on his hands arrested his attention, and
lifting them to the light, he saw stains of blood. Then, looking closely, he
discovered in the clothing the clean-cut rents of stabs—several stabs, one of
them close to the heart, if not penetrating it.
“What does this mean?” he exclaimed, looking fearfully around him.
“Why should the detectives leave us here?”
He had already searched in vain for Poloski's pulse with his chilled and
glassy fingers. He warmed and softened them between his lips, and renewed
his groping for signs of vitality. There was no movement—yes, there was a
feeble, uncertain fluttering; or was it the beating of his own blood? Lehming
feared this man, abhorred him, and almost revolted from touching him; yet
he bent over him with an intense eagerness to see him live, dragging at him
in spirit, one might say, to get him up the slopes of death. And Poloski still
had breath in him; after some minutes he opened his eyes. It was the first
time that Lehming had ever had the gaze of a vitally injured man fixed on
his face; and he trembled all over, every fibre of his flesh seemed to quiver
and crawl, with an agonizing thrill of pity.
“Shall I go and bring help?” he whispered, stooping close to the sufferer.
Poloski did not at once reply, but it was probably not because he did not
understand; for even a mortally wounded man does not become delirious
until fever arrives; at first, if he has his consciousness, he has his reason.
This man's silence sprang mainly no doubt from weakness, though partly also,
it may be, from fear. Who that Lehming would seek would be likely to
bring Poloski help, or fail to bring him further harm?
“Yes—go,” he said at last, in a faint gurgle, at the same time turning his
eyes toward the city.
Lehming rose and set off in the direction of the Battery, trusting that there
he might find a policeman, should accident favor. He ought of course to have
secured the will first, but in his tenderness for this suffering and seemingly
dying fellow creature he had not attempted to rummage for it, if indeed he
had not temporarily forgotten it. Poloski, faint as he doubtless was, remembered
it only too well; he had the presence of mind, resolution, and hardness
of the practised criminal. The moment he was left alone he thrust his hand
slowly inside his blood-stained vest, broke open a loosely stitched seam with
his numbed fingers, and drew forth the document. His strength was as yet far
from gone. A man may be terribly lacerated and still retain much muscular
force. I have known a soldier, who had fallen unconscious with a minié ball
through his lungs, to recover his senses and run a hundred yards or more for
covert, there to fall again in a swoon. So Poloski, with five stabs in his body,
two of them sure to be fatal, was able not only to secure this paper, but to
mangle it with his teeth.
But the work of destruction was not completed when Lehming reappeared;
he had recollected the will and he came running to save it. Terrible as such
a struggle must have been to him, he seized the wounded man's quivering
hands and wrenched from them the bloody fragments.
“I have—ruined you,” whispered Poloski, with a ghastly grimace which
strove to be a smile. “You—and those cursed—Dinnefords. You—shall have
—nothing.”
“Thank Heaven!” replied Lehming with honest gladness. “It is as it
should be. Justice has been done by hands most strangely called to it.”
Poloski stared at him; but the stare was that of a fading consciousness; he
was once more swooning. His eyes had scarcely closed when new actors appeared
upon the scene. As Lehming was gathering up and putting into his
pockets the smaller tatters of the will he heard footsteps advancing rapidly
down the wharf, and presently saw two men enter the circle of light about him.
One of them was Edward Wetherel and the other detective James Sweet.
“You are alive then!” exclaimed Edward, joyfully. “I have suffered
horrors about you. It was a foolish plan and a foolish risk. I could not help
coming to see what had happened. But,” and here he glanced at the prostrate
Poloski, “what is that?”
“Jiminy! it's the Poloski chap!” exclaimed Sweet, who had already discovered
the body and coolly squatted himself to inspect it. “And hain't he
been skewered, though? I say, Mr. Lehming, but you've had a busting old
time with him,” he added, glancing with wonder and admiration at the little
man, whom he regarded as the conqueror of Poloski in single combat.
“I was talking with him when—” Lehming began to explain. Then he
turned to Wetherel and whispered rapidly, “He tore up the will, but I have
the pieces. I was talking with him,” he resumed aloud, “when some men
climbed up over the wharf and assaulted him, knocking me down and going
off before I recovered. I had an idea that they were police or detectives.”
“Detectives?” interrupted Sweet. “The devil!” he at once argued adversely.
“Detectives wouldn't cut him up that way and then leave him;
they'd want the rewards. Some of his own private friends done this—some
of Riley's gang most probably—bet you what you like it was Riley's gang—go
you my whole pile on it. What's he got in his mouth?” he continued, turning
once more to the pallid face under his elbow. “It's a piece of paper, by
Jove! He's been tryin' to swallow it.”
Inserting his horny fingers into Poloski's mouth, he unlocked the teeth with
some difficulty, extricated a tattered scrap of paper, and held it up to the light.
“Look here!” he went on; “this concerns you gents. There's Wetherel
on this.”
“Jabez Wetherel?” asked both Edward and Lehming, as they eagerly
bent over him. “No,” added the former. “Only Wetherel, and not the
whole of that. The signature is destroyed.”
“The signature!” exclaimed Sweet, aghast with sudden comprehension.
“What! was this the will? The Wetherel will? And Poloski had it? Then
he was the murderer. So that was what this night's business was about. Oh,
Mr. Wetherel! you've played it rough on me. You've cut me out of the rewards.
You brought me here, an' kep' me a-waitin', an' never told me a thing
when I could a caught the man.”
“I only brought you because I accidentally met you,” replied Wetherel, a
little moved by this naïve groan of distress, wrenched from the detective's in
most pocket. “You had failed completely so far. Never mind. You shall be
well paid.”
Somewhat comforted, Mr. Sweet touched Poloski with his boot and fell to
moralizing. “So this is the way the world goes, is it? Accident is the Boss.
more, bust open all by itself. Police ain't nowhere. Detectives don't count.
Justice takes the back seat. Well,” he sighed, facing about upon Lehming,
“you are a lucky customer. You git the swag, I s'pose. A round twenty
thousan'! By jiminy, some fellows hit it, aim where they will!” he sighed
again, surveying the misshapen, heavy-laden Lehming with really pathetic
envy.
The dwarf might have said, “I have lost a quarter of a million, and lost it
gladly,” but he did not say it, nor think of it. He turned to Edward and
asked anxiously, “Can you tell whether this man is still living?”
“I think not,” hesitated Wetherel, seeking in vain with his chilled fingers
for Poloski's pulse. “I cannot be sure yet, but he seems to me dead.”
Lehming shuddered. “Without one call to preparation!” he thought;
“why did I not utter it?”
An instant later, worn out with the labor, hardship, and anxiety of this
tragedy which was now over, he sat down on the rimy planks of the wharf, very
faint.
“Hurry off and get a hack,” said Wetherel to Sweet. “He must be taken
home.”
| CHAPTER LIV.
THE MASK TORN OFF. The Wetherel affair | |