The Deaves Affair

There was no wagon or van in the block that might have contained the police, but it was only a hundred feet or so to the corner. Evan had faith in the inspector. As a matter of fact, the van was about half a minute late in arriving; not a very long time, but long enough to make a fatal difference in modern tactics.

They heard steps approaching the door from within – still no sign of the police.

"Fumble for the envelope," Evan swiftly whispered. "It'll gain time."

The door was opened by a woman as respectable in appearance as her house, in short a hard-working, middle-aged American woman with an expression slightly embittered perhaps as a result of the influx of "dagoes" in her neighbourhood. She looked at them enquiringly. George Deaves fumbled assiduously in his inside breast pocket.

"What is it?" she asked sharply.

"I have something for the gentleman up-stairs," he muttered.

"Oh!" She waited five seconds more. "What's the matter?"

"I can't seem to find it."

Still no sign of the police. Evan was on tenterhooks. To create a diversion he asked:

"Has the gentleman lived here long?"

"Only took the rooms yesterday. Hasn't moved in yet."

Evan's heart went down. "Oh, then he isn't in?"

"Yes, he and his friend are up there waiting for the furniture."

She was evidently a victim rather than an accomplice. Still no sign of the police! George Deaves had not the assurance to keep up his pretended search. Evan signalled to him with a look to hand over the envelope. He did so with trembling hands.

At the same moment Evan, whose ears were stretched for sounds from within the house, heard a voice say, not loud: "They're coming over the back fence!" And another voice answered: "Beat it, then."

To Evan it was like the view halloo of the huntsman. He could not resist it. Never thinking of danger, he pushed past the astonished landlady and sprang for the stairs, pulling his pistol as he ran. As he left the stoop he had an impression of a motor van turning the corner from MacDougall.

The woman screamed, and George Deaves yelled to Evan to come back. The woman slammed the door in Deaves' face with the impulse of keeping out at least one intruder. This was unfortunate for Evan, for it delayed the entrance of the police.

As Evan went up the first flight he heard flying feet on the stairs overhead, and he made no pause on the second floor. He heard a door on the third floor slam. It was in the front. Houses of this type have a window on the stair landing and Evan had no difficulty in seeing what he was about.

On the third floor there were four doors on the hall, all closed. Evan went directly to the door he had heard close, the door of the principal front room, and throwing it open, stepped back, half expecting a fusillade from within. But none came. After a moment he stepped to the door and looked in. The room was empty. But there was a door communicating with the rear.

That was as far as his observations carried him. Suddenly a suffocating cloud was thrown over his head from behind and drawn close about him.

A voice said: "Give him one; he's heeled!"

A sickening blow descended on his skull. His strength became as water. Still he did not lose consciousness.

A different voice said: "Let him lie! Come on!"

The first and more determined voice replied:

"Bring him, I tell you! It's too good a chance to miss!"

A rope was hastily wound around Evan's body, and he was partly dragged, partly boosted up a ladder and through a scuttle to the roof. The last sound he heard from the house was the trampling of heavy feet in the entry below. He was put down on the roof. He was still incapable of helping himself, but he heard all that went on as in a dream.

He heard them cover the scuttle. He heard the more resolute voice say: "Help me lift this slab from the parapet." The other replied agitatedly: "Oh, what's the use! Come on! Come on!" The first said: "Do what I tell you! Only one man can stand on the ladder at a time: he'll have all he can do to push this up."

A heavy object was dropped on the scuttle. Evan was then picked up between the two and carried over the roofs. They laid him down on the low parapet that separated each house from its neighbour, and jumping over, picked him up again. In this manner they crossed the roofs of six houses. Evan heard vague sounds of excitement from the street below.

He was put down again. One of his captors climbed above him: he heard his voice come down. With one pulling from above, and one boosting from below, with strenuous efforts Evan was hoisted to a higher roof. The second man climbed after. As he did so he said:

"They're out."

The other replied: "Bolt the door as you come through."

A door slammed to behind them and was bolted. Evan was jolted down many stairs. Someone began to pound violently on the door above. Other doors on the way were opened. Women exclaimed in astonished Italian. "Out of the way! Out of the way!" commanded the resolute voice, and none sought to interfere.

They ran down a long passage and down a few steps to the open street again. Evan was carried across the pavement and flung into an automobile. The door slammed. Running feet were heard from another direction. The resolute voice said:

"Beat it!"

The car jerked into motion. A hoarse voice ordered them to stop. A pistol was fired. The bold voice said:

"Step on her hard!"

The car roared down the street with wide open exhaust, turned a corner on two wheels, and another corner, and soon outdistanced all sounds of pursuit.

The power of movement was coming back to Evan, but he still lay still; he was at too great a disadvantage to put up a struggle. That which enveloped him was a thick cotton comforter; it clove to his tongue, and the stuffy smell of it filled his nostrils. Moreover, he had a lively recollection of the blackjack or whatever it was that had laid him out in the beginning. It was useless to cry out; even if he should be heard above the noise of the engine, who could stop the flying car?

As his wits cleared he set them to work to try to puzzle out the direction in which he was being carried. He could tell from the lurch of the car whether they turned to the right or the left. In the beginning they turned so many corners that all sense of direction was lost, but after a while they struck a car-line and held to it for a long time. He knew they were running in car-tracks by the smoothness of their passage, broken by occasional bumpings as they slipped out of the rails. It was a street with little traffic, for their progress was rapid and uninterrupted.

Presently he heard an elevated train roar overhead, and he knew where he was. "Greenwich street or Ninth avenue," he said to himself. As they still held to their car-line he knew they were bound up-town; headed the other way, they would have reached the end of the island before this. Bye and bye they coasted down a long hill and puffed up the other side. He guessed this to be the valley between Ninety-third street and One Hundred and Fourth, and presently knew he was right, when he heard the wheels of the elevated trains grinding on a curve high overhead. The Hundred and Tenth street curve, of course; there is no other such curve on the island.

The car turned to the right and then to the left again, still running in the rails. "Eighth avenue now," he said to himself, "and still heading north."

Later he heard a car-gong of a different timbre and the unmistakable hiss of a trolley wheel on its wire. There are no overhead wires on Manhattan Island except at the several points where the off-island railways terminate. "Union railway," Evan said to himself. "We've reached the Harlem river." Sure enough, they passed over a draw-bridge; the double clank-clank of the draw could not be mistaken. "Central Bridge," thought Evan.

But in the smoothly paved streets of the Bronx he lost every clue to his whereabouts. They ran in the car tracks for a while, then left them; they made several right and left turns and crossed other tracks. Evan guessed they were in a well-travelled motor highway for he heard other cars, but that told him nothing; there are a dozen such highways radiating from Central Bridge.

He lay against the feet and legs of his two captors. He listened eagerly for any talk between them that might furnish him with a clue. But if they conversed it must have been in whispers. On one occasion, though, he heard him of the milder voice say:

"He's so quiet! Do you suppose he's all right?"

"Search me!" was the indifferent response. "His body is hot enough on my feet, I know."

"Hadn't I better look at him?"

"Sure! And print your face on his memory forever!"

"I believe that comforter is half suffocating him."

"What of it? You can't make a cake without breaking eggs."

Gradually the noises of the street lessened, and Evan gathered that they were getting out into the sparsely settled districts. They were bowling along rapidly and smoothly. About twenty minutes after they had crossed Central Bridge (if Central Bridge it was) the more determined voice suddenly said to the chauffeur:

"Don't turn in now. There's a car behind. Run slow and let it pass. Then come back."

This was evidently done. They turned in the road. As they came back the voice said:

"All clear. Go ahead in."

The car turned to the right and jolted over what seemed to be a shallow ditch. The road that followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, for the chauffeur said anxiously:

"Are you sure we can get through?"

The resolute voice answered: "We've got to."

The chauffeur said: "I couldn't turn around here."

The other voice replied: "There's a clear space in front of the house."

This way was not very long; a quarter of a mile, Evan guessed. They came to a stop, and the two men climbed out over Evan. He was unceremoniously dragged out feet foremost. They carried him a short distance – Evan heard grass or verdure swishing around their legs. They entered a house and laid him down on a floor, a rough worn floor.

Here Evan heard a new voice, a woman's voice with slurred accents and a fat woman's laugh. The strong-voiced man said:

"Here's a guest for you, Aunt Liza."

"Lawsy! Lawsy! What divelment you been up to now!"

A general laugh went round. To the bound Evan it had a blackguardedly and infamous sound.

He was abruptly turned over on his face. While one man held the folds of the comforter tightly round his head, the other two knelt on his back and, pulling his arms behind him, tied his wrists together. Evan put up the best struggle he could against such heavy odds. The man who had taken the principal part against him laughed.

"You see, there's life in him yet," he said.

After his wrists they tied his ankles, and got up from him. The comforter was still over Evan's head, and he was powerless to throw it off. The same voice said:

"After we're out of the room you can uncover his head, and give him air. And feed him when dinner's ready."

A door closed.

CHAPTER XV

THE CLUB HOUSE

The coverlet was thrown back from Evan's head, and breathing deep with relief, he saw bending over him a grinning, fat negress, not evil-looking, but merely simple in expression.

She exclaimed like a child: "Laws! it's a pretty man!"

"Where am I?" asked Evan.

"Deed, I do' know, chile!"

"I'll pay you well if you'll help me out of here."

"Deed, I cain't help you, honey. I'm here, but I don' know where it is no more than you do. White folks brung me here, and white folks will take me away again I reckon."

Evan looked around him. He seemed to be in a room of an ancient abandoned farm-house. There was no furniture. The ceiling was low; the great fireplace was certainly more than a century old. The smell of rotting wood was in the air; the plaster was coming down, revealing the wrought hand-split laths beneath; the floor was full of holes. There were two windows with many missing panes. The sun was streaming in. From Evan's position flat on his back on the floor he could only see the sky through the upper sashes.

In contrast with the wreckage that surrounded them the old negress was neat and clean. She wore a black cotton dress and a gingham apron and on her head was a quaint, flat-topped cap made from a folded newspaper. She seemed neither ill-disposed nor well-disposed towards Evan but regarded him simply as an amusing curiosity.

It ought not to be difficult to bend one so simple to his will, Evan thought, and set to work to conciliate her.

"Aunt Liza, you seem like a decent woman. What are you doing in a den like this?"

She affected not to understand him. "Excuse me, suh, I don' understand No'the'ners' talk very good."

"I say this is a funny looking place."

"Well, I reckon they's gwine fix it up some. Ain't had time yet. The other rooms is better than this."

"Who lives here?"

"Nobody lives here. It's a club."

"What club?"

"Ain't got no name as I knows. It's a private club."

"Well, who comes here?"

"Jes, my boss and his friends."

"What's your boss's name?"

"Mistah Henry."

"What's his other name?"

"Henry."

"What's his first name, then?"

"Henry too. Mistah Henry Henry."

Evan looked at her sharply, but her face was black and bland.

"What do they do here?" he asked.

"Same as gemmen allways does in a club I reckon; smokes and talks and plays cards and mixes juleps."

"Well, do they generally bring their guests here tied hand and foot?"

Aunt Liza dissolved into noiseless fat laughter. "No suh! No suh! That's somepin new, that is!"

"Well, who do you think of it?"

"Laws! I never thinks, suh. I leaves that to the white folks. I jus' looks on and 'preciates things!"

Evan was sure now that she was simply using her simplicity as a cover. In such a contest he could only come off second best, so he fell silent. He was anxious to get her out of the room now that he might get a glimpse out of the window.

"Somebody said something about dinner," he said. "How about it?"

"Ready d'rectly, suh. I'll go look at it."

She went out. The room had but the one door which she locked after her. After a series of struggles Evan succeeded in getting to his knees. If this sounds easy let the doubter have his hands tied behind him, and his ankles tied together, and try it. This brought his head above the level of the window-sill, but the view out the window scarcely repaid him for his trouble. It was much what one might have expected from the condition of the house, a door-yard grown high with grass and weeds, a clump of tiger-lilies, some aged lilac bushes, a few rotten palings marking the line where a fence had run.

Beyond the fence was the road, only a slight depression now in the expanse of weeds. The automobile that had brought Evan was standing there. It was a shabby little landaulet with the top up. It looked like a taxi-cab but carried no metre. Beyond the line of the road the view was shut off by second-growth woods, with a larger tree rising here and there.

It looked like a spot long forgotten of man, yet Evan doubted if it were more than eight miles from Harlem river, and the chances were that it was actually within the New York city limits. Indeed while he looked he heard the faint-far-off chorus of the noon whistles in town.

Hearing the old darkey's shuffling step in the hall, he hastily lay down again. But her sharp eyes instantly marked the change in his position and detected the dust on his knees.

"Ah reckon the sun's too strong for yo' eyes," she said dryly. There were stout, old-fashioned wooden shutters folded back into the window-frames. These she closed and hooked, and Evan was left in gloom.

There was nothing the matter with the dinner she presently brought him; corn soup, fried chicken and hominy. She fed him with the anxious solicitude of a nurse. Indeed Aunt Liza throughout evinced the greatest willingness to make friends; she was so fat and comfortable she just couldn't help it. It was only when Evan started to question her that she showed what a tricksy spirit inhabited the solid frame.

After dinner Evan heard the automobile leave. He guessed that he and Aunt Liza were now alone in the tumbledown house. During the long hot afternoon she left him pretty much to his own devices. He could hear the bees humming outside, and the twitter of birds.

In stories Evan had read when the hero was captured and tied up he always succeeded in "working himself free" at the critical moment. Well Evan patiently set to work to free his hands, but after hours of effort, as it seemed, he had only chafed his wrists and his temper and drawn the knots tighter.

The extreme stillness of the house suggested that Aunt Liza might be indulging in a siesta, and he determined to reach the window if he could. Patiently rolling and hunching himself in the desired direction, he finally made it. He then by a course of gymnastics finally succeeded in getting to his feet. With his chin he knocked up the hook that fastened the shutter, and after many attempts succeeded in pulling the shutter open with his teeth. Even then he was no nearer freedom, for the sash was down, though most of the panes were missing. And Aunt Liza came in and caught him in the act.

"Sho! honey what yo' tryin' to do!" she said reproachfully. "Turn around and sit down."

There was nothing for Evan to do but obey, whereupon she coolly seized his heels, and pulled him across the floor. She fastened up the shutter again. After that she visited him more frequently, and as long as he was a "good boy" was disposed to be quite friendly and sociable.

Towards the end of the afternoon the "club-members" began to arrive. Evidently they came on foot for there was no sound of automobile. Evan, whose only useful sense was hearing, thought he could distinguish eight or nine individuals at different times. None opened his door. The principal gathering place seemed to be the room over his head. A low-voiced hum of conversation came down to him but he could distinguish no words. Frequently there was laughter, which had a particularly devilish and unfeeling ring to Evan.

Aunt Liza served another meal.

Later she entered his room carrying a bandana handkerchief.

"What's that for?" demanded Evan.

"To blind yo' eyes, honey."

"What for?"

"The gemmen wants to see yo' upstairs."

Any prospect seemed better than lying bound alone in the semi-dark, and Evan submitted. Aunt Liza made very sure that he could not see under the bandage over his eyes. Then untying the knots that bound his ankles, she helped him to his feet, and steered him out through the door. Placing his foot on the bottom step she bade him mount the stairs. At the top she led him towards the front of the building and through a doorway into the middle of a room. Here she left him. He heard her steps recede, and heard her close the door behind her.

There he stood bound and blind facing – he knew not what. A thick excitement choked him. Nobody spoke, but his sharpened senses told him that he was surrounded by people. He heard them breathe. The continued silence was cruel on his nerves. He imagined them moving cat-footed about him, smiling meaningly at each other as they prepared to attack. If he only had a wall at his back!

"Keep cool! Keep cool!" he told himself. "They're trying to break your nerve. Stand fast! Make them speak first!"

Finally one spoke. It was he of the resolute, cynical voice. "Well, Weir, here we are! What have you got to say for yourself?"

"It's not up to me to say anything," coolly retorted Evan.

There were several chuckles in the room. Their laughter was hateful to Evan. He gathered from the sounds that the room was of considerable size. Evidently this house was a more pretentious building than he had supposed. The voices echoed as they do in a bare room.

"You are in the presence of the Ikunahkatsi," the voice went on, "that is to say of some of them. We're not at all ill-disposed towards you personally. On the contrary we admire the pluck you've shown. It's been some fun to get the best of you. Confess, we fooled you neatly in the library that day."

Evan thought: "This is the humorous guy that writes the letters." Aloud he said: "Say your say and have done with it."

The voice resumed: "As I say, it's been a good game. We'd be willing to go on indefinitely matching our wits against yours, but the dice are loaded against us, you see. We're outside the law. With that advantage on your side you'd be bound to get us in the end."

"It's not all fun with us, you see. We have a serious purpose in view. You are in the way of that purpose and so, regretfully, we've got to remove you. You're much too good a lad to be in the pay of an old rascal like Deaves. You ought to be on our side, with the free spirits. But there you are. I know you wouldn't switch now."

"To a gang of blackmailers? No thank you," said Evan.

"It would be just as well for you to speak civilly," the voice warned him mildly. "All the gentlemen present are not as patient as I am."

"What do you want of me?" demanded Evan. "Say it."

"You are absolutely in our power here, yet we are willing to release you on a certain condition."

"What's your proposition?"

"Give me your word of honour that you will leave Simeon Deaves' employ, and have no further relations with him or his son."

Evan considered what trap might be concealed behind this seemingly fair offer.

"What will the old miser ever do for you?" the voice went on, "or his slack-twisted son for that matter? Let them stew in their own juice. Give me your word, and you'll be taken home to-night."

"And if I won't?" said Evan.

"Oh, we'll have to keep you prisoner until we have pulled off our big coup. I can't say how long that will be."

Evan said coolly: "Well, I'll see you all damned first."

There was a stir in the room. "Ah!" said the voice that fronted him, coolly. "As a young man of spirit I suppose you feel that is the only possible answer. It's too bad. You may go down-stairs." He called for Aunt Liza.

Evan was returned to his prison on the ground floor.

Aunt Liza said: "Sit down, honey. Be a good boy and let me tie yo' feet together. If you acks ugly I'll have to call the gemmen."

Evan submitted. His ankles were bound, the bandage over his eyes removed, and he was left to his own devices.

The leaden minutes slowly added themselves up to hours. For a long time in his rage he could not think clearly. He was all for defiance, defiance though his life paid the forfeit. But in the end he was bound to cool off and a craftier voice began to advise him.

"I owe this gang neither truth nor loyalty," he thought. "They struck me from behind. They carried me off. They trussed me up like a fowl for roasting. They're about a dozen to one against me. By fair means I haven't a ghost of a show against them. Very well, I'll use foul. If they are simple enough to let me lie myself out of their hands, I'll do it."

Late in the evening he was sent for again. He was eager now to face his jailors. As before his eyes were blindfolded, and his ankles freed. Aunt Liza took him up-stairs and retired.

The mocking voice said: "Well, Weir, I didn't want to leave you in that rat-infested room all night without giving you a chance to change your mind. Wouldn't you rather sleep between your own sheets?"

"I would," said Evan coolly. "I have changed my mind. As you say, Simeon Deaves and his son are nothing to me. I will let them alone hereafter."

"Good man," said the other. "You promise to have nothing further to do with them?"

"I promise to have nothing further to do with them."

A new voice spoke up, a voice that vibrated with anger and hate: "That's too thin! He's trying to fool us! Can't you hear the lie in his voice?"

"Wait a minute," said the other, "I'll put him under oath." Addressing Evan he said mockingly: "I don't know what your attitude towards the bible is, but I'll take a chance. Will you swear it on the bible?"