Project Gutenberg's A Strange Disappearance, by Anna Katharine Green This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: A Strange Disappearance Author: Anna Katharine Green Release Date: September 15, 2008 [EBook #1167] Release Date: January, 1998 Last Updated: October 2, 2016 Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE *** Produced by Lisa Bennett, and David Widger
The House of the Whispering Pines Miss Hurd. An Enigma Leavenworth Case That Affair Next Door Strange Disappearance Lost Man’s Lane Sword of Damocles Agatha Webb Hand and Ring One of My Sons The Mill Mystery Defence of the Bride, Behind Closed Doors and Other Poems Cynthia Wakeham’s Money Risifi’s Daughter. A Drama Marked “Personal” The Golden Slipper To the Minute
* * * *My thoughts on the road back to Melville were many and conflicting. Chief above them all, however, rose the comfortable conclusion that in the pursuit of one mysterious affair, I had stumbled, as is often the case, upon the clue to another of yet greater importance, and by so doing got a start that might yet redound greatly to my advantage. For the reward offered for the recapture of the Schoenmakers was large, and the possibility of my being the one to put the authorities upon their track, certainly appeared after this day’s developements, open at least to a very reasonable hope. At all events I determined not to let the grass grow under my feet till I had informed the Superintendent of what I had seen and heard that day in the old haunt of these two escaped convicts. Arrived at the public house in Melville, and learning that Mr. Blake had safely returned there an hour before, I drew the landlord to one side and asked what he could tell me about that old house of the two noted robbers Schoenmaker, I had passed on my way back among the hills. “Wa’al now,” replied he, “this is curious. Here I’ve just been answering the gentleman up stairs a heap of questions concerning that self same old place, and now you come along with another batch of them; just as if that rickety old den was the only spot of interest we had in these parts.” “Perhaps that may be the truth,” I laughed. “Just now when the papers are full of these rogues, anything concerning them must be of superior interest of course.” And I pressed him again to give me a history of the house and the two thieves who had inhabited it. “Wa’al,” drawled he “‘taint much we know about them, yet after all it may be a trifle too much for their necks some day. Time was when nobody thought especial ill of them beyond a suspicion or so of their being somewhat mean about money. That was when they kept an inn there, but when the robbery of the Rutland bank was so clearly traced to them, more than one man about here started up and said as how they had always suspected them Shoenmakers of being villains, and even hinted at something worse than robbery. But nothing beyond that one rascality has yet been proved against them, and for that they were sent to jail for twenty years as you know. Two months ago they escaped, and that is the last known of them. A precious set, too, they are; the father being only so much the greater rogue than the son as he is years older.” “And the inn? When was that closed?” “Just after their arrest.” “Has’nt it been opened since?” “Only once when a brace of detectives came up from Troy to investigate, as they called it.” “Who has the key?” “Ah, that’s more than I can tell you.” I dared not ask how my questions differed from those of Mr. Blake, nor indeed touch upon that point in any way. I was chiefly anxious now to return to New York without delay; so paying my bill I thanked the landlord, and without waiting for the stage, remounted my horse and proceeded at once to Putney where I was fortunate enough to catch the evening train. By five o’clock next morning I was in New York where I proceeded to carry out my programme by hastening at once to headquarters and reporting my suspicions regarding the whereabouts of the Schoenmakers. The information was received with interest and I had the satisfaction of seeing two men despatched north that very day with orders to procure the arrest of the two notable villains wherever found.
MY DEAREST CECILIA. I have tried in vain to match the sample you sent me at Stewart’s, Arnold’s and McCreery’s. If you still insist upon making up the dress in the way you propose, I will see what Madame Dudevant can do for us, though I cannot but advise you to alter your plans and make the darker shade of velvet do. I went to the Cary reception last night and met Lulu Chittenden. She has actually grown old, but was as lively as ever. She created a great stir in Paris when she was there; but a husband who comes home two o’clock in the morning with bleared eyes and empty pockets, is not conducive to the preservation of a woman’s beauty. How she manages to retain her spirits I cannot imagine. You ask me news of cousin Holman. I meet him occasionally and he looks well, but has grown into the most sombre man you ever saw. In regard to certain hopes of which you have sometimes made mention, let me assure you they are no longer practicable. He has done what—Here the conversation ceased in the other room, the Countess made a movement of advance and I closed the book with an inward groan over my ill-luck. “It is very pretty,” said she with a weary air; “but as I remarked before, I am not in the buying mood. If you will take half you mention, I may consider the subject, but—” “Pardon me, Madame,” I interrupted, being in no wise anxious to leave the placque behind me, “I have been considering the matter and I hold to my original price. Mr. Blake of Second Avenue may give it to me if you do not.” “Mr. Blake!” She eyed me suspiciously. “Do you sell to him?” “I sell to anyone I can,” replied I; “and as he has an artist’s eye for such things—” Her brows knitted and she turned away. “I do not want it;” said she, “sell it to whom you please.” I took up the placque and left the room.
The dead body of a girl such as you describe was found in the East river off Fiftieth Street this morning. From appearance has been dead some time. Have telegraphed to Police Headquarters for orders. Should you wish to see the body before it is removed to the Morgue or otherwise disturbed, please hasten to Pier 48 E. R. GRAHAM.“Come,” said I, “let’s go and see for ourselves. If it should be the one—” “The dinner party proposed by Mr. Blake for to-night, may have its interruptions,” he remarked. I do not wish to make my story any longer than is necessary, but I must say that when in an hour or so later, I stood with Mr. Gryce before the unconscious form of that poor drowned girl I felt an unusual degree of awe stealing over me: there was so much mystery connected with this affair, and the parties implicated were of such standing and repute. I almost dreaded to see the covering removed from her face lest I should behold, what? I could not have told if I had tried. “A trim made body enough,” cried the official in charge as Mr. Gryce lifted an end of the cloth that enveloped her and threw it back. “Pity the features are not better preserved.” “No need for us to see the features,” exclaimed I, pointing to the locks of golden red hair that hung in tangled masses about her. “The hair is enough; she is not the one.” And I turned aside, asking myself if it was relief I felt. To my surprise Mr. Gryce did not follow. “Tall, thin, white face, black eyes.” I heard him whisper to himself. “It is a pity the features are not better preserved.” “But,” said I, taking him by the arm, “Fanny spoke particularly of her hair being black, while this girl’s—Good heavens!” I suddenly ejaculated as I looked again at the prostrate form before me. “Yellow hair or black, this is the girl I saw him speaking to that day in Broome Street. I remember her clothes if nothing more.” And opening my pocketbook, I took out the morsel of cloth I had plucked that day from the ash barrel, lifted up the discolored rags that hung about the body and compared the two. The pattern, texture and color were the same. “Well,” said Mr. Gryce, pointing to certain contusions, like marks from the blow of some heavy instrument on the head and bared arms of the girl before us; “he will have to answer me one question anyhow, and that is, who this poor creature is who lies here the victim of treachery or despair.” And turning to the official he asked if there were any other signs of violence on the body. The answer came deliberately, “Yes, she has evidently been battered to death.” Mr. Gryce’s lips closed with grim decision. “A most brutal murder,” said he and lifting up the cloth with a hand that visibly trembled, he softly covered her face. “Well,” said I as we slowly paced back up the pier, “there is one thing certain, she is not the one who disappeared from Mr. Blake’s house.” “I am not so sure of that.” “How!” said I. “You believed Fanny lied when she gave that description of the missing girl upon which we have gone till now?” Mr. Gryce smiled, and turning back, beckoned to the official behind us. “Let me have that description,” said he, “which I distributed among the Harbor Police some days ago for the identification of a certain corpse I was on the lookout for.” The man opened his coat and drew out a printed paper which at Mr. Gryce’s word he put into my hand. It ran as follows:
Look out for the body of a young girl, tall, well shaped but thin, of fair complexion and golden hair of a peculiar bright and beautiful color, and when found, acquaint me at once. G.“I don’t understand,” began I. But Mr. Gryce tapping me on the arm said in his most deliberate tones, “Next time you examine a room in which anything of a mysterious nature has occurred, look under the bureau and if you find a comb there with several long golden hairs tangled in it, be very sure before you draw any definite conclusions, that your Fannys know what they are talking about when they declare the girl who used that comb had black hair on her head.”
“Calmez vous, mon amie, il vous aime et il vous cherche. Dans quatre heures vous serez heureuse. Allons du courage, et surtout soyez maitre de vous meme.”“Thanks!” I exclaimed in a calm matter-of-fact way as I perceived the sudden tremor that seized her as she recognized the handwriting and realized that the words were for her. “My friend says he will pay my week’s rent and bids me be at home to receive him,” said I, turning upon the two ferocious faces peering over her shoulder, with a look of meek unsuspiciousness in my eye, that in a theatre would have brought down the house. “Is that what those words say, you?” asked the father, pointing over her shoulder to the paper she held. “I will translate for you word by word what it says,” replied she, nerving herself for the crisis till her face was like marble, though I could see she could not prevent the gleam of secret rapture that had visited her, from flashing fitfully across it. “Calmez vous, mon amie. Do not be afraid, my friend. Il vous aime et il vous cherche. He loves you and is hunting for you. Dans quatre heures vous serez heureuse. In four hours you will be happy. Allons du courage, et surtout soyez maitre de vous meme. Then take courage and above all preserve your self-possession. It is the French way of expressing one’s self,” observed she. “I am glad your friend is disposed to help you,” she continued, giving me back the letter with a smile. “I am afraid you needed it.” In a sort of maze I folded up the letter, bowed my very humble thanks to her and shuffled slowly back. The fact is I had no words; I was utterly dumbfounded. Half way through that letter, with whose contents you must remember I was unacquainted, I would have given my whole chance of expected reward to have stopped her. Read out such words as those before these men! Was she crazy? But how naturally at the conclusion did she with a word make its language seem consistent with the meaning I had given it. With a fresh sense of my obligation to her, I hurried to my room, there to count out the minutes of another long hour in anxious expectation of her making that endeavor to communicate with me, which her new hopes and fears must force her to feel almost necessary to her existence. At length, my confidence in her was rewarded. Coming out into the hall, she hurried past my door, her finger on her lip. I immediately rose and stood on the threshold with another paper in my hand, which I had prepared against this opportunity. As she glided back, I put it in her hand, and warning her with a look not to speak, resumed my usual occupation. The words I had written were as follows:
At or as near the time as possible of your brother’s going out, you are to come to this room wrapped in an extra skirt and with your shawl over your head. Leave the skirt and shawl behind you, and withdraw at once to the room at the head of the stairs. You are not to speak, and you are not to vary from the plan thus laid down. Your brother and father are to be arrested, whether or no; but if you will do as this commands, they will be arrested without bloodshed and without shame to one you know.Her face while she read these lines, was a study, but I dared not soften toward it. Dropping the paper from her hand, she gave me one inquiring look. But I pointed determinedly to the words lying upward on the floor, and would listen to no appeal. My resolve had its effect. Bowing her head with a sorrowful gesture, she laid her hand on her heart, looked up and glided from the room. I took up that paper and tore it into bits. And now for the first time since I had been in the house, I closed the door of my room. I had a part to perform that rendered the dropping of my disguise indispensable. The old French artist had finished his work, and henceforth must merge into Q. the detective. Shortly before two o’clock my assistants began to arrive. First, Mr. Gryce appeared on the scene and was stowed away in a large room on the other side of mine. Next, two of the most agile, as well as muscular men in the force who, thanks to having taken off their shoes in the lower hall, gained the same refuge without awakening the suspicions of those we were anxious to surprise. Lastly, the landlady who went into the closet to which I had bidden Mrs. Blake retire after leaving in my room the articles I had mentioned. All was now ready and waiting for the departure of the youngest Schoenmaker. Would he disappoint us and remain at home that day? Had any suspicions been awakened in the stolid breasts of these men, that would serve to make them more watchful than usual against running unnecessary risks? No; at or near the time for the clock to strike two, their door opened and the tread of a lumbering foot was heard in the hall. On it came, passing my room with a rude stamping that gradually grew less distinct as the hardy rough went down the corridor, brushing the wall behind which Mr. Gryce and his men lay concealed with his thick cane, and even stopping to light his pipe in front of the small apartment where cowered our good landlady with her eternal basket of mending in her lap. At length all was quiet, and throwing open my door, I withdrew into a small closet connected with my room, to wait with indescribable impatience, the appearance of Mrs. Blake. She came in a very few minutes, remained for an instant, and departed, leaving behind her as I had requested, the skirt and shawl in which she had left her father’s presence. I at once endued myself in these articles of apparel—taking care to draw the shawl well over my head—and with a pocket handkerchief to my face, (a proceeding made natural enough by the sneeze which at that very moment I took care should assail me) walked boldly back to the room from which she had just come. The door was of course ajar, and as I swung it open with as near a simulation of her manner as possible, the vision of her powerful father lolling on a bench directly before me, offered anything but an encouraging spectacle to my eyes. But doubling myself almost together with as ladylike an atch-ee as my masculine nostrils would allow, I succeeded in closing the door and reaching a low stool by the window without calling from him anything worse than a fretful “I hope you are not going to bark too.” I did not reply to this of course, but sat with my face turned towards the street in an attitude which I hoped would awaken his attention sufficiently to cause him to get up and come over to my side. For as he sat face to the door it would be impossible to take him by surprise, and that, now that I saw what a huge and muscular creature he was, seemed to me to be the only safe method before us. But, whether from the sullenness of his disposition or the very evident laziness of the moment, he manifested no disposition to move, and hearing or thinking I did, the stealthy advance of Mr. Gryce and his companions down the hall, I allowed myself to give way to a suppressed exclamation, and leaning forward, pressed my forehead against the pane of glass before me as if something of absorbing interest had just taken place in the street beneath. His fears at once took alarm. Bounding up with a curse, he strode towards me, muttering, “What’s up now? What’s that you are looking at?” reaching my side just as Mr. Gryce and his two men softly opened the door and with a quick leap threw their arms about him, closing upon him with a force he could not resist, desperate as he was and mighty in the huge strength of an unusually developed muscular organization. “You, you girl there, are to blame for this!” came mingled with curses from his lips, as with one huge pant he submitted to his captors. “Only let me get my hand well upon you once—Damn it!” he suddenly exclaimed, dragging the whole three men forward in his effort to get his mouth down to my ear, “go and rub that sign out on the door or I’ll—you know what I’ll do well enough. Do you hear?” Rising, still with face averted, I proceeded to do what he asked. But in another moment seeing that he had been effectually bound and gagged, I took out the piece of red chalk I had kept in my pocket, and deliberately chalked it on again, after which operation I came back and took my seat as before on the low stool by the window. The object now was to secure the second rascal in the same way we had the first; and for this purpose Mr. Gryce ordered the now helpless giant to be dragged into the adjoining small room formerly occupied by Mrs. Blake, where he and his men likewise took up their station leaving me to confront as best I might, the surprise and consternation of the one whose return we now awaited. I did not shrink. With that brave woman’s garments drawn about me, something of her dauntless spirit seemed to invade my soul, and though I expected—But let that come in its place, I am not here to interest you in myself or my selfish thoughts. A half hour passed; he had never lingered away so long before, or so it seemed, and I was beginning to wonder if we should have to keep up this strain of nerve for hours, when the heavy tread was again heard in the hall, and with a blow of the fist that argued anger or a brutal impatience, he flung open the door and came in, I did not turn my head. “Where’s father?” he growled, stopping where he was a foot or so from the door. I shook my head with a slight gesture and remained looking out. He brought his cane down on the floor with a thump. “What do you mean by sitting there staring out of the window like mad and not answering when I ask you a decent question?” Still I made no reply. Provoked beyond endurance, yet held in check by that vague sense of danger in the air,—which while not amounting to apprehension is often sufficient to hold back from advance the most daring foot,—he stood glaring at me in what I felt to be a very ferocious attitude, but made no offer to move. Instantly I rose and still looking out of the window, made with my hand what appeared to be a signal to some one on the opposite side of the way. The ruse was effective. With an oath that rings in my ears yet, he lifted his heavy cane and advanced upon me with a bound, only to meet the same fate as his father at the hands of the watchful detectives. Not, however, before that heavy cane came down upon my head in a way to lay me in a heap at his feet and to sow the seeds of that blinding head-ache, which has afflicted me by spells ever since. But this termination of the affair was no more than I had feared from the beginning; and indeed it was as much to protect Mrs. Blake from the wrath of these men, as from any requirements of the situation I had assumed the disguise I then wore. I therefore did not allow this mishap to greatly trouble me, unpleasant as it was at the time, but, as soon as ever I could do so, rose from the floor and throwing off my strange habiliments, proceeded to finish up to my satisfaction, the work already so successfully begun.
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