Agatha Webb by Anna Katharine Green (best ebook reader under 100 txt) 📖

“I heard you speak the name of Captain Wattles,” said he. “I am hunting for Captain Wattles. Can you tell me where he is?”

He soon saw that he had struck the wrong men for information. They not only refused to answer him, but treated him with open disdain. Unwilling to lose time, he left them, and having no other resource, hastened to the last place mentioned on his list.

It was now late, too late to enter a private house under ordinary circumstances, but this house was lighted up, and a carriage stood in front of it; so he had the courage to run up the steps and consult the large door-plate visible from the sidewalk. It read thus:

HABERSTOW.

Fortune had favoured him better than he expected.

He hesitated a moment, then decided to ring the bell. But before he had done so, the door opened and an old gentleman appeared seeing a younger man out. The latter had his arm in a sling, and bore himself with a fierceness that made his appearance somewhat alarming; the other seemed to be in an irate state of mind.

“No apologies!” the former was saying. “I don’t mind the night air; I’m not so ill as that. When I’m myself again we’ll have a little more talk. My compliments to your daughter, sir. I wish you a very good evening, or rather night.”

The old gentleman bowed, and as he did so Sweetwater caught a glimpse (it was the shortest glimpse in the world) of a sweet face beaming from a doorway far down the hall. There was pain in it and a yearning anxiety that made it very beautiful; then it vanished, and the old gentleman, uttering some few sarcastic words, closed the door, and Sweetwater found himself alone and in darkness.

The kaleidoscope had been given another turn.

Dashing down the stoop, he came upon the gentleman who had preceded him, just as he was seating himself in the carriage.

“Pardon me,” he gasped, as the driver caught up the reins; “you have forgotten something.” Then, as Captain Wattles looked hastily out, “You have forgotten me.”

The oath that rang out from under that twitching red moustache was something to startle even him. But he clung to the carriage window and presently managed to say:

“A messenger, sir, from New Bedford. I have been on the hunt for you for two hours. It won’t keep, sir, for more than a half-hour longer. Where shall I find you during that time?”

Captain Wattles, on whom the name New Bedford seemed to have made some impression, pointed up at the coachman’s box with a growl, in which command mingled strangely with menace. Then he threw himself back. Evidently the captain was not in very good humour.

Sweetwater, taking this as an order to seat himself beside the driver, did so, and the carriage drove off. It went at a rapid pace, and before he had time to propound more than a question or two to the coachman, it stopped before a large apartment-house in a brilliantly lighted street.

Captain Wattles got out, and Sweetwater followed him. The former, who seemed to have forgotten Sweetwater, walked past him and entered the building with a stride and swing that made the plain, lean, insignificant-looking messenger behind him feel smaller than ever. Indeed, he had never felt so small, for not only was the captain a man of superb proportions and conspicuous bearing, but he possessed, in spite of his fiery hair and fierce moustache, that beaute de diable which is at once threatening and imposing. Added to this, he was angry and so absorbed in his own thoughts that he would be very apt to visit punishment of no light character upon anyone who interfered with him. A pleasing prospect for Sweetwater, who, however, kept on with the dogged determination of his character up the first flight of stairs and then up another till they stopped, Captain Wattles first and afterwards his humble follower, before a small door into which the captain endeavoured to fit a key. The oaths which followed his failure to do this were not very encouraging to the man behind, nor was the kick which he gave the door after the second more successful attempt calculated to act in a very reassuring way upon anyone whose future pay for a doubtful task rested upon this man’s good nature.

The darkness which met them both on the threshold of this now open room was speedily relieved by a burst of electric light, that flooded the whole apartment and brought out the captain’s swaggering form and threatening features with startling distinctness. He had thrown off his hat and was relieving himself of a cloak in a furious way that caused Sweetwater to shrink back, and, as the French say, efface himself as much as possible behind a clothes-tree standing near the door. That the captain had entirely forgotten him was evident, and for the present moment that gentleman was too angry to care or even notice if a dozen men stood at the door. As he was talking all this time, or rather jerking out sharp sentences, as men do when in a towering rage, Sweetwater was glad to be left unnoticed, for much can be gathered from scattered sentences, especially when a man is in too reckless a frame of mind to weigh them. He, therefore, made but little movement and listened; and these are some of the ejaculations and scraps of talk he heard:

“The old purse-proud fool! Honoured by my friendship, but not ready to accept me as his daughter’s suitor! As if I would lounge away hours that mean dollars to me in his stiff old drawing-room, just to hear his everlasting drone about stocks up and stocks down, and politics gone all wrong. He has heard that I play cards, and—How pretty she looked! I believe I half like that girl, and when I think she has a million in her own right—Damn it, if I cannot win her openly and with papa’s consent, I will carry her off with only her own. She’s worth the effort, doubly worth it, and when I have her and her money—Eh! Who are you?”

He had seen Sweetwater at last, which was not strange, seeing that he had turned his way, and was within two feet of him.

“What are you doing here, and who let you in? Get out, or—”

“A message, Captain Wattles! A message from New Bedford. You have forgotten, sir; you bade me follow you.”

It was curious to see the menace slowly die out of the face of this flushed and angry man as he met Sweetwater’s calm eye and unabashed front, and noticed, as he had not done at first, the slip of paper which the latter resolutely held out.

“New Bedford; ah, from Campbell, I take it. Let me see!” And the hand which had shook with rage now trembled with a very different sort of emotion as he took the slip, cast his eyes over it, and then looked back at Sweetwater.

Now, Sweetwater knew the two words written on that paper. He could see out of the back of his head at times, and he had been able to make out these words when the man in New Bedford was writing them.

“Happenings; Afghanistan,” with the figures 2000 after the latter.

Not much sense in them singly or in conjunction, but the captain, muttering them over to himself, consulted a little book which he took from his breast pocket and found, or seemed to, a clew to their meaning. It could only have been a partial one, however, for in another instant he turned on Sweetwater with a sour look and a thundering oath.

“Is this all?” he shouted. “Does he call this a complete message?”

“There is another word,” returned Sweetwater, “which he bade me give you by word of mouth; but that word don’t go for nothing. It’s worth just twenty-five dollars. I’ve earned it, sir. I came up from New Bedford on purpose to deliver it to you.”

Sweetwater expected a blow, but he only got a stare.

“Twenty-five dollars,” muttered the captain. “Well, it’s fortunate that I have them. And who are you?” he asked. “Not one of Campbell’s pick-ups, surely?”

“I am a confidential messenger,” smiled Sweetwater, amused against his will at finding a name for himself. “I carry messages and execute commissions that require more or less discretion in the handling. I am paid well. Twenty-five dollars is the price of this job.”

“So you have had the honour of informing me before,” blustered the other with an attempt to hide some serious emotion. “Why, man, what do you fear? Don’t you see I’m hurt? You could knock me over with a feather if you touched my game arm.”

“Twenty-five dollars,” repeated Sweetwater.

The captain grew angrier. “Dash it! aren’t you going to have them? What’s the word?”

But Sweetwater wasn’t going to be caught by chaff.

“C. O. D.,” he insisted firmly, standing his ground, though certain that the blow would now fall. But no, the captain laughed, and tugging away with his one free hand at his pocket, he brought out a pocketbook, from which he managed deftly enough to draw out three bills. “There,” said he, laying them on the table, but keeping one long vigorous finger on them. “Now, the word.”

Sweetwater laid his own hand on the bills.

“Frederick,” said he.

“Ah!” said the other thoughtfully, lifting his finger and proceeding to stride up and down the room. “He’s a stiff one. What he says, he will do. Two thousand dollars! and soon, too, I warrant. Well, I’m in a devil of a fix at last.” He had again forgotten the presence of Sweetwater.

Suddenly he turned or rather stopped. His eye was on the messenger, but he did not even see him. “One Frederick must offset the other,” he cried. “It’s the only loophole out,” and he threw himself into a chair from which he immediately sprang up again with a yell. He had hurt his wounded arm.

Pandemonium reigned in that small room for a minute, then his eye fell again on Sweetwater, who, under the fascination of the spectacle offered him, had only just succeeded in finding the knob of the door. This time there was recognition in his look.

“Wait!” he cried. “I may have use for you too. Confidential messengers are hard to come by, and one that Campbell would employ must be all right. Sit down there! I’ll talk to you when I’m ready.”

Sweetwater was not slow in obeying this command. Business was booming with him. Besides, the name of Frederick acted like a charm upon him. There seemed to be so many Fredericks in the world, and one of them lay in such a curious way near his heart.

Meanwhile the captain reseated himself, but more carefully. He had a plan or method of procedure to think out, or so it seemed, for he sat a long time in rigid immobility, with only the scowl of perplexity or ill-temper on his brow to show the nature of his thoughts. Then he drew a sheet of paper toward him, and began to write a letter. He was so absorbed over this letter and the manipulation of it, having but one hand to work with, that Sweetwater determined upon a hazardous stroke. The little book which the captain had consulted, and which had undoubtedly furnished him with a key to those two incongruous words, lay on the floor not far from him, having been flung from its owner’s hand during the moments of passion and suffering I have above mentioned. To reach this book with his foot, to draw it toward him, and, finally, to get hold of it with his hand, was not difficult for one