Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889

"None at all. We are satisfied with the admissions," assented the prosecutor cheerfully, not at all dissatisfied with expediting business in the close and heated quarters in which he found himself.

A look of relief, almost of pleasure, passed over Dorn's face. He had his Mary spared the embarrassment and unhappiness of appearing as a witness against him, for that time at least.

A man named Schooly, from New Haven, testified that he saw Dorn in his boarding-house in that city two days after the date of the murder, and he was then suffering from some cuts, bruises, and sprains which he claimed to have received while running through the Long Island woods at night.

Detective Turner bore witness to the finding in the prisoner's room in New Haven of a pair of pantaloons and a jacket stained with blood, and a shirt which, though it had been washed, still bore blood stains. He further narrated that the prisoner had stoutly resisted arrest; had, indeed, fought hard to effect an escape; and upon being overcome and searched, had been found to have, in a belt about his body, some three hundred dollars in gold coins – which the witness here produced for inspection by the magistrate, and possible identification by Mr. Peter Van Deust.

The old man looked them over a little, and then pushed them away with a weary sigh, saying simply:

"Jacob had gold in his bag; I don't know how much. Minted coins are all alike."

The case looked very weak for the prosecution. There was really nothing beyond mere suspicion to connect the prisoner with the crime. The prosecuting attorney, with a discontented look, whispered to the detective, – who was evidently uneasy, – and shuffled over again the pages of the testimony taken at the inquest, with a faint hope that he might find there some previously overlooked clue to be of service now. But there was nothing.

The prisoner's counsel leaned back to his client and whispered exultantly: "I defy any jury, or magistrate, to find on that evidence anything worse than the Scotch verdict of 'Not Proven.'"

"'Not Proven'?" exclaimed Dorn, "I don't want such a verdict as that. Cast a cloud of suspicion and doubt over my whole life! No, I'd rather be hanged at once and done with it. What I demand is a verdict of 'Not Guilty.'"

"Better be satisfied with what you can get. 'Not Proven' would be just as good."

"Not for me. I want to tell the Squire, and everybody, just what happened to me that night. I'm sure that they will see I am telling the truth, and I'll clear away this suspicion."

An older and shrewder practitioner than Mr. Dunn would have positively refused to permit his client to imperil, by a word, the present promising condition of his case; but he could not help entering into the feeling of the brave, handsome and earnest young fellow who pleaded so hard to be permitted to defend himself with the truth, and yielded.

"If your honor pleases," he said simply, "my client requests to be permitted to make his own statement of the events of the night in question affecting him, or in which he had a part."

"I shall be happy to hear him," answered Squire Bodley, who was conscious of feeling prepossessed in Dorn's favor, and desirous of seeing him clear himself from suspicion.

The prosecuting attorney looked up with a new light of hope in his eyes. Well he knew how even innocent persons sometimes tangle themselves up in trying to tell a straight story, and how their unpractised and unguarded utterances can be garbled, warped, and misconstrued. But Dorn's manner gave him very little encouragement. In a plain, straight-forward way, that went home with the force of truth to the hearts of all who heard him, the young man told his brief tale of mal-adventure on that luckless night.

Why he had come to Long Island that evening and tried to avoid being seen by anybody but the person he came to see was, he said, his own business – had no bearing on this affair – and he did not propose to make any statement about that. He did not need to. Already it had in some way become matter of public knowledge all over that end of Long Island that he had come to see Mary Wallace, his sweetheart, who stuck to him so well in his trouble that she had been to see him in jail. And nobody thought the worse of him for that, certainly.

Having disposed of that matter so simply, he retold his story, from the time of his starting to run through the woods to catch Mr. Hollis's sloop up to his final arrival at his home in New Haven the next morning. "Deeply I regret," he said, in concluding the narrative, "that I do not know the two persons who assisted me; the gentleman on horseback and the old man in the smack; and beyond measure grateful I would be to them if they, learning of the trouble into which I have innocently fallen, would come forward to corroborate my statement of what happened that night."

"And you know of absolutely nothing," said the prosecuting attorney, after a little whispering with old Peter Van Deust, who was seen to violently shake his head, "which might lead to the discovery of the real existence of either of those persons who, according to your very romantic story, came so opportunely to give you their aid?" He spoke with an affectation of incredulity, which in his heart he was very far from feeling.

"Nothing whatever, sir," replied Dorn. "The only trace I have left of either of them, except the memory of their kindness to me, is the handkerchief which the little gentleman bound around my head. It has been washed, with the rest of my clothing over which the blood flowed from my scalp wounds, and was sent to me yesterday in the valise which was forwarded to me from my boarding house in New Haven. I have it with me. Here it is."

So saying he drew from one of his pockets a large white linen handkerchief, clean and neatly folded, which he handed to the prosecuting attorney. That official took it in an absent-minded way, looked at it negligently, and – his mind busy with some trap he was minded to set for the young man – then tossed the light fabric carelessly from him upon the table. It fell before old Peter Van Deust, who snatched it up and, after turning it from one corner to another for close examination, suddenly startled everybody by a loud cry and the exclamations:

"It was his! It was Jacob's! I can swear to it!"

The old man was immediately recalled to the witness-stand, and testified with much demonstration of excitement:

"I felt that it was his as soon as I saw it, and when I examined it I was sure of it. Jacob had some harmless, womanish ways about him. He could sew, and knit, and embroider a little. He marked all his clothing himself – every article of it I believe – in a very modest way; hardly discernible at a casual glance, but very plain when you come to look for it, as you can see on that handkerchief. Look in that corner and you'll see his initials 'J. V. D.' worked with a single white thread. You can hardly see it without you hold it so that the light will show the lines of the letters lying across the threads of the fabric. There! That way it shows plainly."

It was as he said. The letters "J. V. D." were unquestionably there.

Dorn sank back in his seat aghast and terrified by this astonishing discovery. Who now believed his story of the little gentleman and the old man in the smack? Nobody. Everybody saw that it was an artfully concocted lie, and was indignant with him for duping them, by his apparently ingenuous and honest manner, into momentarily believing him. An audible murmur about the "finger of Providence" ran through the throng, and Mr. Dunn groaned, half to himself and half to his client:

"Oh, I was afraid you'd play the devil somehow! Why couldn't you have let well enough alone?"

Squire Bodley, having carefully examined for himself the marked handkerchief, said solemnly to the accused:

"Young man, you have, I fear, placed the noose about your own neck. You will stand committed to await the action of the Grand Jury. Without bail, of course," he added, seeing that the prisoner's counsel had risen and seemed about to say something.

Whatever it was that Mr. Dunn had an idea of saying or doing when he got upon his feet, he changed his mind and sat down again. The fact was that he was as completely stunned as was his client by the revelation that had been made. Dorn had sworn to him that he was innocent, and he had believed it. But now – ? He, even, began to have his doubts.

At this moment a sharp-featured woman, wearing a sun-bonnet and with a tangled lock of sandy hair hanging down her back, having literally fought her way to the railing, leaned over it and asked the magistrate in an acidulous whisper:

"Squire, can't I swear to something against him?"

"It would be useless, now, Mrs. Thatcher," replied the Squire, "as he has already been committed. But your evidence might be desired by the Grand Jury. What can you testify to?"

"I can swear," answered the woman, with eager spite, "that he's a hardened villain, and that I believe he killed Jake Van Deust, and that he's been keeping that fool niece of mine out in the woods to the latest and most indecent hours of the night."

"Madam," said the Squire, with mingled dignity and contempt, "you will excuse my saying that you are simply disgusting! Go away!"

XIX.

THE MAD AVENGER

Nobody could devote himself with greater assiduity to an almost hopeless task than Lem Pawlett did to his pursuit of the unknown lawyer. The weather was exceedingly hot in the city, and he, accustomed to breathing the pure fresh breezes of the sea-shore, felt it terribly oppressive. The pavements were very hard to his feet, used to the soft earth and sand of the country, and he was actually lame most of the time. The interminable streets and the multitude of people confused him and gave him a horrible sense of isolation among them all. Then he very much missed little Ruth's affectionate despotism, and her practical good sense and encouragement, for he had so many disappointments and discouragements to encounter that he was fairly heart-sick almost all the while. Still the good fellow did not give up his chase. He had come to town for a purpose, he said to himself, and he would succeed in it or die trying. Day after day he haunted the courts and the streets where there were most lawyer's offices, and it was not long before he became actually a terror to all the little elderly gentlemen who practised law in New York – and there were a great many of them, as there are even yet. Seeing one who, it seemed to him, might come within the somewhat wide specifications he alone had for his guidance, of being small and past middle age, it was his habit to buttonhole the suspected person and put to him directly the question:

"Do you know the Van Deusts of Easthampton?"

They all said "No." A very few of them, at first, had curiosity enough to add "why?" But upon his commencing his story which from his manner promised to be long, they would always exclaim, "Ah! One moment – excuse me. I see a man – " and would dart away. Generally they did not even ask "why?" but darted away about their own business all the same.

His frequent repetitions of the same question were overheard by other members of the bar than those to whom it was addressed, and it was observed that the interrogation was always directed to little, elderly gentlemen. So very speedily it became a stock-joke among the profession for waggish counsellors to ask of his selected class of victims, at the most inopportune times and unexpected places, "Do you know the Van Deusts of Easthampton?" until they were almost maddened by the iteration.

One jocose attorney christened Lem "The Mad Avenger," and by that title he was soon generally known. The poor fellow was much puzzled to account for the hilarity that his appearance in court sometimes seemed to occasion; for the general interest that appeared to be awakened among the lawyers when he approached one of whom he thought he should ask his question; and for the angry haste with which the person so approached would reply, oft-times before he said more than "Do you – " with an emphatic "No. Never heard of them in my life." Sometimes he asked the same person, twice or thrice even, on different days, for he could not be expected to remember them all.

There are always haunting the courts a few poor, harmless mad people, – wrecks whose hearts and minds have been at some time crushed by the Juggernaut of the law. The mercy of forgetfulness has wiped away the memory of ruinous defeat and made place for ever-springing hope in their breasts. They imagine always that their cases are "coming on very soon – to-morrow, perhaps;" for the bitter, heart-sickening lesson of legal procrastination is deepest graven, and survives all else in their blighted brains. Lem got to be regarded as one of those unfortunate beings. And then, even if he had got an opportunity to tell his story to anybody, the chances are that it would have been taken for a fiction of his imagination. Still he plodded on indefatigably, with his eyes always open for the wanted witness, and his one question ever trembling on his lips. His manner of operation was certainly not the best, – not the one that a skilful detective would have adopted, – but it was the best he knew; and sooner or later Providence is pretty certain to help those who endeavor for themselves as earnestly and well as they know how.

Once only he sought to make a divergence from the path upon which he had set out. He went to the police, thinking to ask their aid. The superintendent received him brusquely, demanding as soon as he put his foot over the threshold of the office: —

"Well, my man, what do you want?"

"I have come, sir, to ask some help here in finding out about the murder of Jacob Van Deust, of Easthampton, Long Island."

The superintendent referred to a book at his elbow, and replied curtly, "Man on that case now."

"Yes, I know there is," answered Lem, "but it seems to me that he's on the wrong tack, and – "

The superintendent did not trouble himself to hide his contempt for the criticism of an unprofessional, and a countryman at that, upon one of his force of detectives, and interrupted with the abrupt retort:

"Very probably. But I guess you are not likely to teach him his business. Martin!" – turning to his messenger – "Tell the captain I'll see him now."

Lem accepted this discourteous dismissal, and found his way into the street without anybody seeming to have noticed that he said, "Good-day, sir."

Singularly enough as it might appear, in view of the notoriety that Lem's question had obtained among the lawyers, but for a very excellent reason, nevertheless, the one man of all of them who could have responded "yes;" the one man of whom he was in search, had not in all this time heard that anybody was hunting an acquaintance of the Van Deusts and, though he was the only person in New York who had any direct business interest in the Van Deusts, knew anything about them or would have been likely to know of any important event happening to them, he had not even heard that Jacob Van Deust had been murdered. That one man was Mr. Pelatiah Holden. Of late years he had practiced very little in the courts. He had amassed a considerable fortune – one so regarded in those days, at least – by the exercise of his profession; and as he grew older and attained a high and deserved reputation by his ability, gradually drifted into the comparatively quiet, easy, and lucrative life of an office lawyer – one who gives counsel to other lawyers in difficult and important cases. His deep learning in the law, his wide knowledge of rulings and precedents, and his great caution in forming and framing opinions, gave weight and value to his advice, and put him in the position of a general who plans battles for others to fight, but seldom finds himself directly engaged in combat.

It was his custom to go to his office at an early hour every week-day morning; lock himself in a little inner room, the walls of which were covered with a magnificent legal library; receive there only persons who came on such important business as could not be attended to by Mr. Anderson, his old and able confidential clerk; have a lunch handed into him at noon precisely; and, at four o'clock to leave for his home somewhere in the upper part of the city. During his seclusion in that inner room, he was constantly busy, poring over law books, reading points submitted by counsel, and writing opinions. When a person was admitted to see him, the very atmosphere by which he was surrounded, was a warning against waste of time in idle conversation. Not one, of even his most intimate friends, would have dreamed of taking up his time with mention of a new lunatic haunting the courts.

So it was that Lem met him and passed him by in the street, unconsciously, over and over again, not even knowing that he was a lawyer. The young man was so uneasy, restless and unhappy, as the days flew rapidly by, and the time for Dorn's trial was drawing nearer – for the grand jury had found an indictment against him within a week after his commitment by the magistrate, and he was to be tried for his life at the next session of the court – that he could no more sleep at night than rest in the daytime, and was almost constantly strolling aimlessly about the streets, growing thinner, more careworn and despondent daily.

One evening, as he was passing the front of the old Chatham Street theatre, he was surprised to hear himself called by name, and turning, found himself face to face with Silas Thatcher. He had not seen the scapegrace for more than three years, had never been at all intimate with him, and hardly recognized him now, so greatly had his appearance changed. Silas was dressed in black cloth, wore a silk hat, flashing breast-pin and shining boots, had a moustache and goatee, and was smoking a long cigar. In all respects he was a good sample of the lot of a dozen or more fellows lounging near the theatre door, every one of whom was known to the police as a gambler or a thief, and most of them as deserving official notice in both characters. The vulgar affectation with which he sought to impress his rustic acquaintance, did not lacquer over the coarse blackguardism of his customary manners, and Lem, without well knowing why, felt an instinctive dislike for, and distrust of, him. Still, he stood and talked a little while, telling the last news he had from home; that Uncle and Aunt Thatcher and Mary were all well; that Eben Stebbins had gone a-whaling; that the schooner "Pretty Polly," with Captain Marsh and three men, had been lost in a gale; that Dorn Hackett had come back and been arrested on suspicion of having murdered Jacob Van Deust —

"Murdered old Jake Van Deust! You don't mean to say that you folks down in that dead-alive little village, have had the sensation of a real murder!"

"Ah! yes. A terrible sensation, too, the killing and robbery of a poor, weak, old man, and the arrest of an innocent person for the crime."

"Let's go and get a drink, while you tell me all about it."

"No, thank you. I don't drink. But I can tell you all about it here, all the same." And he told the whole story, at least, as far as it was known to the public, instinctively suppressing, however, all mention of the evidence he hoped to find in the city.

"That handkerchief business will be likely to hang him, won't it?" asked Silas.

"It seems very serious to his friends."

"Mighty queer that he should have had the thing! – if he isn't guilty."

"And yet I am as sure as that I am alive this moment, that if they hang Dorn Hackett for that murder, they will hang an innocent man for the crime of another."

"Come, let's go and take a drink, just one. Take something light if you like. And then we'll go around and see some life. Come on. I want a drink."

"No, you'll have to excuse me, Silas. I never drink, and I feel pretty tired; and, I think I'll go to bed."

"Go to bed! now! Why, a man isn't a hen. Night is the only time to see life in New York. I've only been up a couple of hours or so. Come along, and I'll show you the elephant."

"No, thank you. I have no desire to see him. I'd rather go to bed. Good-night."

"Well, good-night, – if you will go."

Silas, when left alone, hastily entered the bar-room attached to the theatre, and called for a glass of brandy. While he was pouring out the fiery beverage, an acquaintance entered, and, looking at him with surprise, exclaimed: —

"Why, Sile! What the deuce is the matter with you? You look as if you'd seen a ghost!"

"Maybe I have. What'll you take?" answered Silas, dryly.

"Brandy," replied his friend, and the young man's looks were no more commented on.

XX.

RUTH'S LETTER

When Lem reached the humble hotel on Pearl Street, at which he put up, he found a letter addressed to him in the clerk's rack. It had arrived while he was out that afternoon. No need for him to open it to know who it came from. One glance at the superscription was enough for him to see that Ruth's chubby little hand had guided the pen. Retiring to his little room he opened the missive, trimmed his solitary candle, and with a countenance of happy anticipation sat himself down to read.

"Dear old Lem," she wrote, "I'm beginning to think that you are away an awful long time, and I'm getting real anxious about you sometimes. Perhaps you have found some handsome city lady that you think you like ever so much better than me, and have no idea of coming back to the village. If so, just mention the fact while I have some chance left. I hear that Deacon Harkins is looking out for a fourth wife, and who knows – But there, I won't plague you any more, you big, good-hearted, stupid dear. I know you won't fall in love with anybody but your little Ruth, any more than she will with somebody else than her big Lem, and I can answer for her. But there! I haven't much time to write about you and I, for I've got something real serious to tell you, something that may be a great deal of help to you in what you are trying to do; that is, supposing you are trying what you started for, and not just to capture the handsome city lady. Mary has been to see Dorn in jail, and had a talk with him about the little elderly gentleman, and he has remembered something more than he told you that makes us both sure we have seen him, and would know him again; and it's a wonder to me that he didn't think of telling you, for he's a man you couldn't mistake. But then you men are all so flighty and slow to think about things, and you never get them right until a woman takes them in hand."

Lem scratched his head, looked perplexed, reread the long sentence, and then muttered to himself:

"Ah, yes! I see. Dorn has remembered something more – and it's the little elderly gentleman she and Mary have seen – and it's a wonder Dorn didn't think of telling me that something he has remembered – and the little elderly gentleman is a man I couldn't mistake. Yes, it's all clear now." And he read on:

"I remember him just as well as if I saw him only yesterday, and I'll tell you exactly how he looked. He wore a wig, very dark brown, nearly black, and very neatly brushed; and he had a shirt bosom with a frill – like those queer old heroes of the revolution in our pictorial book of American History; and his tall silk hat had a very wide crape around it; and he had a funny little breast-pin in his frill that looked like a square of glass with gray hair under it, and little pearls around it, like grandmother's brooch. He had on a stock, a very wide, stiff stock, that kept his head up very straight; and when he bowed he moved as if he was only hinged in the middle. He spoke very deliberately, and seemed to be afraid somebody would snap him up right off if he didn't say exactly the right word, and he appeared to be too cautious ever to say anything positive. He spoke of the Van Deusts as 'supposed to be brothers,' and when Dorn asked him what time it was, he looked at his watch and replied that, 'according to his information and belief it was eleven minutes past ten.'"

"Now I'm sure, Lem, that such peculiarities as his must mark him out; so that when you know them you will have little difficulty in finding him. Do your best, darling, and make haste, for the time is getting terribly short for poor Dorn and dear Mary, – and yet it seems awful long to

"Your own little"Ruth."

"This is serious. This merits consideration and dissection," said Lem to himself, spreading the letter on the table before him, and squaring himself to go at it as a study. It was nearly morning when he felt that he had fully mastered all its contents, and threw himself on his bed for a short and troubled sleep.