they always gave you a shock as of something strange and haunting—I gave up my will as if forced by a magnetic power, and not only opened the house to her but my heart as well; swearing to all she demanded and keeping my oath too, as I would preserve my soul from sin and my life from the knife of the destroyer.”
“But, when she went,” broke from the pallid lips of the man before her, “when she was taken away from the house, what then?”
“Ah,” returned the agitated woman. “what then! Do you not think I suffered? To be held by my oath, an oath I was satisfied she would wish kept even at this crisis, yet knowing all the while she was drifting away into some evil that you, if you knew who she was, would give your life to avert from your honor if not from her innocent head! To see you cold, indifferent, absorbed in other things, while she, who would have perished any day for your happiness, was losing her life perhaps in the clutches of those horrible villains! Do not ask me to tell you what I have suffered since she went; I can never tell you,— innocent, tender, noble-hearted creature that she was.”
“Was?” His hand clutched his heart as if it had been seized by a deathly spasm. “Why do you say was?”
“Because I have just come from the Morgue where she lies dead.”
“No, no,” came in a low shriek from his lips, “that is not she; that is another woman, like her perhaps, but not she.”
“Would to God you were right; but the long golden braids! Such hair as hers I never saw on anyone before.”
“Mr. Blake is right,” I broke in, for I could not endure this scene any longer. “The woman taken out of the East river to-day has been both seen and spoken to by him and that not long since. He should know if it is his wife.”
“And isn’t it?”
“No, a thousand times no; the girl was a perfect stranger.”
The assurance seemed to lift a leaden weight from her heart. “O thank God,” she murmured dropping with an irresistible impulse on her knees. Then with a sudden return of her old tremble, “But I was only to reveal her secret in case of her death! What have I done, O what have I done! Her only hope lay in my faithfulness.”
Mr. Blake leaning heavily on the table before him, looked in her face.
“Mrs. Daniels,” said he, “I love my wife; her hope now lies in me.”
She leaped to her feet with a joyous bound. “You love her? O thank God!” she again reiterated but this time in a low murmur to her self. “Thank God!” and weeping with unrestrained joy, she drew back into a corner.
Of course after that, all that remained for us to do was to lay our heads together and consult as to the best method of renewing our search after the unhappy girl, now rendered of double interest to us by the facts with which we had just been made acquainted. That she had been forced away from the roof that sheltered her by the power of her father and brother was of course no longer open to doubt. To discover them, therefore, meant to recover her. Do you wonder, then, that from the moment we left Mr. Blake’s house, the capture of that brace of thieves became the leading purpose of our two lives?
CHAPTER XV
A CONFAB
Next morning Mr. Gryce and I met in serious consultation. How, and in what direction should we extend the inquiries necessary to a discovery of these Schoenmakers?
“I advise a thorough overhauling of the German quarter,” said my superior. “Schmidt, and Rosenthal will help us and the result ought to be satisfactory.”
But I shook my head at this. “I don’t believe,” said I, “that they will hide among their own people. You must remember they are not alone, but have with them a young woman of a somewhat distinguished appearance, whose presence in a crowded district, like that, would be sure to awaken gossip; something which above all else they must want to avoid.”
“That is true; the Germans are a dreadful race for gossip.”
“If they dared to ill-dress her or ill-treat her, it would be different. But she is a valuable piece of property to them you see, a choice lot of goods which it is for their interest to preserve in first-class condition till the day comes for its disposal. For I presume you have no doubt that it is for the purpose of extorting money from Mr. Blake that they have carried off his young wife.”
“For that reason or one similar. He is a man of resources, they may have hoped he would help them to escape the country.”
“If they don’t hide in the German quarter they certainly won’t in the Italian, French or Irish. What they want is too keep close and rouse no questions. I think they will be found to have gone up the river somewhere, or over to Jersey. Hoboken would’nt be a bad place to send Schmidt to.”
“You forget what it is they’ve got on their minds; besides no conspicuous party such as they could live in a rural district without attracting more attention than in the most crowded tenement house in the city.”
“Where do you think, then, they would be liable to go?”
“Well my most matured thought on the subject,” returned Mr. Gryce, after a moment’s deliberation, “is this,— you say, and I agree, that they have hampered themselves with this woman at this time for the purpose of using her hereafter in a scheme of blackmail upon Mr. Blake. He, then, must be the object about which their thoughts revolve and toward which whatever operations or plans they may be engaged upon must tend. What follows? When a company of men have made up their minds to rob a bank, what is the first thing they do? They hire, if possible, a house next to the especial building they intend to enter, and for months work upon the secret passage through which they hope to reach the safe and its contents; or they make friends with the watchman that guards its treasures, and the janitor who opens and shuts the doors. In short they hang about their prey before they pounce upon it. And so will these Schoenmakers do in the somewhat different robbery which they plan sooner or later to effect. Whatever may keep them close at this moment, Mr. Blake and Mr. Blake’s house is the point toward which their eyes are turned, and if we had time—”
“But we have’nt,” I broke in impetuously. “It is horrible to think of that grand woman languishing away in the power of such rascals.”
“If we had time,” Mr. Gryce persisted, “all it would be necessary to do would be to wait, they would come into
