The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery Read online

  CHAPTER III.

  SEQUELAE.

  "You don't care for 'The Headless Horseman'?" said Robert to littleElsie Barlow, who was sitting on his knee in Emily's parlor. "Which ofthe stories do you like best of all?"

  Elsie shut up her book of fairy tales, trying to think.

  "You ask mamma which she likes best, Bessie or me?"

  "Oh, Elsie, that's dodging," laughed Robert.

  "No, 'tisn't dodging," protested Elsie. "'Cause mamma don't like eitherof us best; and I like 'The House of Clocks' and 'The Ball of Gold' justthe same as each other."

  "'The Ball of Gold'--what a charming title! Tell me that. It can't helpbeing pretty."

  "Well, you see there was a great, tall giant," began Elsie, huntingdiligently for his picture in the wonder-book, "and this giant had aball of gold that rested on a saucer in his castle, just like an egg inits cup. It was round-shaped like a crystal and weighed, oh, ever somany tons. See, there he is."

  "Ugh!" Robert shuddered realistically. "What a monster!"

  "And oh, so cruel! Every knight that rode by he would challenge him tobattle, and the giant would cut off his head and hang them around hisbelt, and the bodies he would throw to three great, savage dogs. Thatwas all they had to eat."

  "What cannibals!"

  "Here comes Emily," said Mrs. Barlow, who had been rocking in her chair.The young lady wore a water lily at her bosom and was reading from theSunday Beacon.

  "Six lives lost, Robert," she cried, "and the Beacon has started asubscription for their families."

  "But I haven't finished my story," pouted forgotten little Elsie.

  "Put it away, dear," said her mother, riding roughshod over the child'swishes, as the best of mothers do. Perhaps these crosses areeducational.

  The following list printed in heavy capitals was the first paragraphEmily read:

  KILLED.

  MARY LACY, salesgirl. FLORENCE F. LACY, bookkeeper. ALEXANDER WHITLOVE, elevator boy (colored). OSCAR SCHUBERT, ladder man. An unknown girl.

  "At midnight," she continued, reading aloud, "Rosanna Moxom, alace-worker, was reported dying, and the injuries of nearly a dozenothers are serious enough to excite alarm."

  "Did you say the Beacon has started a relief fund for their families?"asked Robert.

  "Yes, and headed it with $1,000."

  Robert inwardly resolved to make the total $1,025.

  "Most of those dead or likely to die," continued Emily, while Robertheld Elsie and Mrs. Barlow rocked in her easy-chair, "belonged to thehapless group that had been penned in the top story of the Harmonbuilding. They were employes of the firm of Carter & Hallowell, lacedealers. Shut off by a solid wall from the Cazenove street side of thebuilding, they had not heard the shouts of fire until too late. A broadsheet of flame barred their exit to the stairs, which were midway alongthe corridor. Over fifteen of the girls, however, had come down safelyin the elevator, and Alexander, the colored elevator boy, had promisedto make a return trip for the others. He was true to his word and wasseen remounting as high as the fifth story. But here the heated ironcables refused to work, and the poor fellow, stuck fast between twofloors, unable to escape from his wooden box, must have suffered amartyr's death."

  "Poor boy!" murmured Mrs. Barlow. Perhaps she was thinking of her own17-year-old son, whose death within a twelvemonth had deprived her homeof its only masculine presence.

  "Heroism!" cried Robert. "It is all around us in homespun, and yet werun back to search for it under togas or coats of mail."

  "Oscar Schubert's death was equally mysterious," continued Emily,turning the Beacon inside out. "He was a hook-and-ladder man, attachedto company 3, a German, and in every way a valuable servant. The poorfellow left a wife and two flaxen-haired children, whose lamentations atthe hospital when the body proved to be that of their father broughttears to the eyes even of the stoical attendants, accustomed as they areto the surroundings of death."

  Here Emily was interrupted by a glee of laughter from a romping groupdownstairs. It was the children coming home from Sunday school. A tiptoepeep at the visitor magically hushed their merriment, but Robertpersuaded the youngest to intrust herself to his unoccupied knee, wherehe held her as a counterpoise to Elsie, inwardly resolving to increasehis subscription to $50 for the sake of Oscar Schubert's two littleones.

  "But the tenderest sympathy," read Emily, "is reserved for the Lacygirls, sole supports of a large family, the cares of which, however, didnot seem to weigh upon their amiable dispositions. They had embracedeach other on the ledge before jumping, and leaped together, arm in arm,missing the extended net by taking too strong a horizontal impulse,which threw them almost to the curbstone. In the case of Mary, the eldersister, death was instantaneous, but the features were not marred in theleast. The face of Florence, the younger, had been crushed in beyondrecognition, yet she lingered on and it was nearly two hours before herheart finally ceased to beat. A feeble mother, an irresponsible brotherand several small sisters are left to mourn these truly estimable youngwomen."

  During this paragraph Robert's promissory subscription had silentlyrisen to $100. If it continued mounting he would soon have little readycash to meet his current expenses with. Little Elsie and Bessie, themidget of all, listened wonderingly on his knee; and it is notsurprising if during the paragraph that followed, all about money lossesand insurance policies and proprietors' histories, his thoughts,startled by a casual mention of Prof. Arnold's name in the reading,roamed away to his own teens, when he used to sit on his UncleBenjamin's knee, as the little girls were sitting on his.

  He called up a picture of the Yorkshire youth who had been brought overto the new world, with a younger brother and sister, by parents richerin virtue than in coin of the world. Both the sons had won wealth andBenjamin fame. Beginning as a gardener, he soon wrung recognition forhis botanical learning from a world which he affronted from beginning toend by an independence passing far over the line into the region ofeccentricity. He belonged to the rare class of self-made scholars, and apopular herb-balsam of his compounding had laid the corner-stone of afortune which sixty years of prudent addition had reared even higherthan that of his brother Henry, the banker. An Englishman by birth, hehad refused to change his allegiance. "Salute the flag you're bornunder," was the motto he preached; and, consistently inconsistent inthis regard, he applauded the equally strong American loyalty of hissister's son, Robert Floyd.

  How upright, how unimpeachable, he had been, thought Robert, in hisold-school fixity of principle! Overbearing to those he distrusted,irritable among shams, he was charity itself to real merit and to thepoor. His pet aversions made a long and amusing list--lawyers, electriclights, theaters, agnostics, cats; but each was only the reverse side ofa medal whose obverse was passionate love. If, for instance, he wasknown to have stoned stray kittens from his garden, he made up for hiscruelty by treating dogs almost as human beings.

  "You and I have the canine temperament," he would say to Robert, a touchof self-sufficiency mingling with his character, as is not unusual inreally benevolent men. "You and I have the canine temperament. Thank theheaven that blessed us, and beware of cats. Two-foot and four-foot, it'sall the same. Feline! Catty!" The last word was pronounced with all theexplosive scorn which features as incapable of sneering as a hound'scould manage to express. Robert saw the great smooth face rise beforehim now, tinged by time and weather to a pure cherry-wood red, andcrowned with luxuriant silver hair fringing out from under theskull-cap. Sometimes, indeed, in the drawn corners of the mouth and thelimpid brown eyes, he had read a true affinity to the noble St. Bernardwho used to lie stretched upon the mat between them.

  "Three o'clock, latest. Here's something special." Emily's rise of tonerecalled the young man out of his dream. Elsie was once more deep in herwonder-book and Bessie had slipped down from his knee and run to thewindow.

  "At 2:49 Rosanna Moxom passed away at the hospital, making the sixthvictim of the fire. An employe of John Kalinovitch, t
he furrier, whooccupied rooms on the same floor with Carter & Hallowell, has identifiedthe unknown girl as Katie Galuby, a young Polish maiden----"

  "Katie Galuby?" cried Mrs. Barlow. "Can that be the girl we know?"

  "What about Katie Galuby, mamma?" asked Elsie, looking up.

  "She's dead," said mamma, and Elsie's lip quivered at the awful word.

  "A young Polish maiden, who stitched pelts in their musky establishment.She had probably run the wrong way," Emily read, "as children will--forKatie was no more than a child, though a workwoman these two years--andso, finding herself with the Carter & Hallowell group, had followed themin their random flight and shared their unhappy fate. This was the girlPatrolman Chandler caught in his arms, who laughed and then faintedaway. The smile was still on her lips in death, and her face lookedsweet in its expression of happy innocence, though old, prematurely oldand wan."

  "Perhaps the poor girl is more blessed out of this world," said Mrs.Barlow, whose eyes showed that she herself had not had a fair-weathervoyage through life. The Galubys lived in the next block, where therewas a colony of poor Poles, and she had often spoken to Katie.

  "Listen," cried Emily, reading another paragraph: "Up to 2:30 o'clock nonews has been received of Ellen Greeley, the cook in Prof. Arnold'shouse. Inquiries made at her sister's failed to throw any light on thequestion of her whereabouts. Dark rumors afloat, however, at a latehour, emanating from an authoritative source and rapidly taking shape,seemed to put her disappearance in close connection with othermysterious facts, to the detriment of a well-known young man'sreputation."

  "I wonder who that can be?" asked Mrs. Barlow, but before any one couldanswer a loud murmur in the street interrupted the quiet party.

  "Look, mamma, see all the people coming!" cried Bessie, pulling Mrs.Barlow nearer to the window. Oaths and imprecations in some unknowntongue thrilled the little group of listeners.

  "It's a riot among the Poles," said Mrs. Barlow. Emily and Robert atonce joined the group in the bay window.

  "There he is!" shouted some one in the crowd, pointing, and immediatelythe covered heads became a sea of upturned faces--for the parlor was oneflight up--foreign faces, inflamed with passion. A hatless father,brandishing a hatchet, led them on. But whither?

  "They are breaking in our door!" shrieked Mrs. Barlow. "And Mr. Galubyat their head."

  Almost instantly a volley of stones crashed against the side of thehouse and the windows were riddled. Emily and her mother drew back, withthe whimpering little ones, but Robert stood his ground, watching oldGaluby hacking at the door like a madman.

  "What are you doing?" he called down, raising the sash.

  There was a furious ring at the bell, followed by a snap, as if thecord were pulled out. A small pebble sailed through the open window andstruck Robert in the cheek. At sight of the blood, though it was no morethan a strawberry splash, Emily seized his arm.

  "I must go down and stop this, Emily."

  "No, Robert; they are savages when they get excited."

  "What do they want?"

  "Heaven knows! We have never quarreled with them!"

  By this time the mob was augmented by swarms of gamins and roughs of theneighborhood, but a change of tone in the uproar indicated that therewas some opposition to their mischief-making.

  "It is the police who have come," said Mrs. Barlow, but Emily clung toRobert, so that he could neither approach the window nor go downstairsto the door without violence to the fragile girl he loved. For manyminutes she held him there, till the murmurs below were mingled withshrieks of pain, and their dispersion and diminution told of thescattering of the crowd. Mrs. Barlow cautiously peeped out.

  "They are arresting Mr. Galuby. He is covered with blood," she cried.Just then came a loud knocking at the front door. Robert tore himselffree and ran down to open it. A police sergeant stepped inside.

  "What is it all about?" asked Floyd.

  "We'll give you safe escort to the cars. Hurry up!"

  "Why should I be escorted?"

  "Galuby's girl was killed in the fire and the Poles learned you werehere."

  "What of that?"

  "Why, it's all over town that you set it."