CHAPTER XX.—MAN OR WOMAN.
Into the cab sprang the woman. Slam! the door closed behind her. Crack!—the whip of the driver fell on the horses, and away went the cab.
“Stop!” shouted Hodge.
Cabby did not heed the command.
Frank made a rush for another cab.
“Follow!” he cried, pointing toward the disappearing vehicle. “I will give you five dollars—ten dollars—if you do not lose sight of that cab!”
“In!” shouted the driver. “I’ll earn that ten!”
In Frank plunged, jerking the door to behind him. The cab whirled from the platform with a jerk. Away it flew.
“It will be worth twenty dollars to get a peep beneath that veil!” muttered Frank Merriwell.
The windows were open. He looked out on one side. He could see nothing of the cab they were pursuing. Back he dodged, and out he popped his head on the other side.
“There it is!”
He felt that he was not mistaken. The fugitive cab was turning a corner at that moment. They were after it closely.
Frank wondered where the woman could have been hidden on the train so that she had escaped observation. He decided that she must have been in one of the toilet rooms.
But what about the veiled man who was disguised as a woman? That man had known Frank—had spoken his name.
It was a double mystery.
The pursuit of the cab continued some distance. At last the cab in advance drew up in front of a hotel, and a man got out!
Merriwell had leaped to the ground, and cabby was down quite as swiftly, saying:
“There, sir, I followed ’em. Ten plunks, please.”
The door of the other cab had been closed, and the man was paying the driver. He wore no overcoat, and carried no baggage.
“Fooled!” exclaimed Frank, in disappointment. “You have followed the wrong cab, driver!”
“I followed the one you told me to follow,” declared the driver.
“No; you made a mistake.”
“Now, don’t try that game on me!” growled the man. “It’s your way of attempting to get out of paying the tenner you promised.”
“No; I shall pay you, for you did the best you could. It was not your fault that you made a mistake in the mass of carriages at the depot.”
“Didn’t make no mistake,” asserted the cabby, sullenly.
“Well, it’s useless to argue over it,” said Merry, as he gave the man the promised ten dollars. “I am sure you made a mistake.“
“Think I couldn’t follow Bill Dover and his spotted nigh hawse?” exploded the driver. “I couldn’t have missed that hawse if I’d tried.”
Frank saw one of the horses attached to the other cab was spotted. He had noticed that peculiarity about one of the horses attached to the cab the mysterious woman had entered.
“It’s the same horse!” exclaimed Merry.
“’Course it is,” nodded the driver.
The man had paid his fare and was carelessly sauntering into the hotel. As he disappeared through the door-way, Frank sprang to the door of the other cab, flung it wide open, and looked in, more than half expecting to discover the woman still inside.
No woman was there!
Frank caught his breath in astonishment, and stood there, staring into the empty cab.
“Hi, there! wot cher doin’?” called the man on the box.
Frank did not answer. He reached into the cab and felt on the floor. He found something, brought it forth, looked at it amazed.
It was a woman’s dress!
But where was the woman?
Garment after garment Frank lifted, discovering that all a woman’s outer wearing apparel lay on the floor of that cab.
“Vanished!” he muttered. “Disappeared—gone? What does it mean?”
Then he thought of the man who had left the cab and entered the hotel, and he almost reeled.
“That was the woman!”
He had seen one woman change into a man on the train, and here was another and no less startling metamorphosis.
“Driver,” he cried, “didn’t you take a person on in woman’s clothes at the station and let one off in man’s clothes just now?”
“None of yer business!” came the coarse reply. “I knows enough not ter answer questions when I’m paid ter keep still.”
That was quite enough; the driver might as well have answered, for he had satisfied Merriwell.
Frank was astonished by the remarkable change that the woman had made while within the cab, but now he believed he understood why she had not been detected while on the train. She had been able to make a change of disguises in the toilet room, and had passed herself off as a man. Hodge had looked for a veiled woman, and he had looked for a veiled woman; it was not strange that both of them had failed to notice a person in masculine attire who must have looked like a woman.
Up the hotel steps Frank leaped. He entered the office, he searched and inquired. At last, he found out that a beardless man had entered by the front door, but had simply passed through and left by a side door.
“Given me the slip,” decided Frank. He realized that he had encountered a remarkably clever woman.
And the mystery was deeper than ever.
Frank went to the hotel at which the company was to stop, and found all save Wynne had arrived. Hodge was on the watch for Merry, and eagerly inquired concerning his success in following the woman. Frank explained how he had been tricked.
“Well, it’s plain this unknown female is mighty slippery,” said Bart. “You have not seen the last of her.”
“I am afraid there are some things about this double mystery which will never be solved,” admitted Frank. “For instance, the identity of the man who fell into the river.”
“We’ll be dead lucky if we do not have trouble over that affair,” said Hodge.
“How do you mean?”
“Some fool is liable to swear out a warrant charging us with throwing the unknown overboard.”
“I thought of that,” nodded Frank, “and that is why I took occasion on the train to straighten out your story somewhat. It is always best, Bart, to stick to the straight truth.”
Hodge flushed and looked resentful, but plainly sought to repress his feelings, as he said:
“I am not the only person in the world who believes the truth should not be spoken at all times.”
“If one cannot speak the truth,” said Merry, quietly, “he had better remain silent and say nothing at all, particularly in a case like this. There is an old saying that ‘the truth can afford to travel slowly, but a lie must be on the jump all the time, or it will get caught.’”
“Well, I don’t think this is any time to moralize,” came a bit sharply from Bart. “If we were to go into an argument, I rather think I could show logically that a white lie is sometimes more commendable than the truth.”
“In shielding another, possibly,” admitted Merry; “but never in shielding the one who tells it. The more a person lies, the more he has to lie, for it becomes necessary to tell one falsehood to cover up another, and, after a while, the unfortunate individual finds himself so ensnared in a network of fabrications that it is impossible for him to clear himself. Then disaster comes.”
“Oh, don’t preach!” snapped Bart. “Let’s go to your room and talk this matter of the veiled woman over. There is trouble brewing for you, and you must be prepared to meet it. Havener has registered for the company, and all you have to do is call for your key.”
So Frank and Bart went to the room of the former.
Puelbo had been well “papered.” The work was done thoroughly, and every board, every dead wall, and every available window flaunted the paper of “True Blue.”
The failure of “For Old Eli” was still fresh in the minds of the people of the city, but neither had they forgotten Frank Merriwell’s plucky promise to bring the play back to that place and perform it successfully there.
The newspapers of the place had given him their support, but Frank was determined that extracts from the notices in the Denver papers should reach the eyes of those who did not read the Puelbo papers closely. With this end in view, he had the extracts printed on flyers, as small bills are called, and the flyers were headed in startling type:
“Five Hundred Dollars Fine!”
To this he added:
|
“Each and every person who reads the following clippings from Denver newspapers will be fined Five Hundred Dollars!” |
It is needless to say that nearly every one who could read was careful to read the clippings through to the end.
This manner of attracting attention was effective, even though it may seem rather boyish in its conception.
His printing was done on the very night that he arrived in Puelbo, and the flyers were scattered broadcast the following day.
He obtained the names of a large number of prominent citizens, to whom he sent complimentary tickets, good for the first night’s performance.
Frank was determined to have a house, even if it was made up principally of deadheads.
On the occasion of his former visit to Puelbo he had received some free advertising through Leslie Lawrence, who had circulated printed accusations against him. He scarcely expected anything of the sort on this occasion, and he was rather startled when, on the morning following his arrival, he discovered that a circular had been scattered broadcast, which seemed to be even more malicious than the former attempt upon him.
In this circular he was plainly charged with the murder of an unknown woman shortly after leaving Denver, and it was said he had been aided in the crime by Bartley Hodge.
Frank was calmly reading this bold accusation when Hodge came bursting into the room in a manner that reminded Merry of his entrance under similar circumstances on the former occasion.
Seeing the paper in Merry’s hand, Bart hoarsely cried:
“So you’ve got it! Then you know about it! Well, now, sir, what do you think of that?”
“Sit down, Hodge,” said Frank, calmly. “You seem all out of breath. You are excited.”
“Excited!” shouted the dark-faced youth. “Well, isn’t that enough to excite a man of stone!”
“Do you mean this?”
“Yes, that! What in the name of creation do you suppose I meant?”
“I wasn’t certain.”
“Wasn’t cert—— Oh, say; that’s too much! What do you think? What are you made of, anyway?”
“Now, my dear fellow, you must stop going on like this. You’ll bring on heart disease if you keep it up.”
Hodge dropped down on a chair and stared at Merry.
“Well—I’ll—be—blowed!” he gasped.
“You are nearly blowed now,” said Frank. “You seem quite out of breath.”
“Is it possible you have read that paper you hold in your hand?” asked Bart, with forced calmness.
“Yes, I have read it.”
“Well, I do not understand you yet! I thought I did, but I’m willing to confess that I don’t.”
Then he jumped up, almost shouting:
“Why, man alive, don’t you understand that we are charged with murder—with murder?”
“Yes,” said Frank, still unruffled, “it seems so by this.”
“And you take it like that!”
“What is the use to take it differently?”
“Use? Use? Sometimes I think you haven’t a drop of good, hot blood in your body.”
“If a person has plenty of good, hot blood, it is a good thing for him to cool it off with good, cool brains. Hot blood is all right, but it should be controlled; it should not control the man.”
“I don’t see how you can talk that way, under such circumstances. Why, we may be arrested for murder any moment!”
“We shall not.”
“Shall not?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because our unknown enemy does not dare come out into the open and make the charge against us.”
“What makes you think so?”
“This.”
Frank held up the accusing paper.
“That?”
“Yes.”
“Why should that make you think so?”
“If our enemy had intended to come out and make the charge against us openly, this would not have appeared. It is simply an attempt to hurt us from under cover, or to arouse others against us—against me, in particular.”
Bart could see there was logic in Merry’s reasoning, but still he was fearful of what might happen.
“Well, even you must acknowledge that the unknown enemy may succeed in his purpose,” said Hodge. “There were a number of persons who saw something of the struggle on the train. This may arouse some of them, or one of them, at least, to do something.”
“It may.”
“You confess that?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t think you would.”
“I don’t believe it will. Hodge, I have a fancy that, in this case, same as in the other, my enemy will overshoot the mark.”
“How?”
“Something tells me that this warning, intended to turn suspicion against me, will serve as an advertisement. Of course, it will be a most unpleasant notoriety to have, but it may serve to bring people out to see me.”
Bart looked thoughtful.
“I never thought of that,” he confessed, hesitatingly.
“I had far rather not had the notoriety,” admitted Frank; “but that can’t be helped now. Let the people turn out to see ‘True Blue.’ Perhaps I’ll get a chance at my enemy later.”
“The veiled woman——”
“Is in it, I fancy. I believe there was some connection between the veiled woman and the veiled man—the one who plunged from the train into the river.”
“I have thought of that, but I’ve been unable to figure out what the connection could be. Why was the man veiled and disguised thus?”
“So that I would not recognize him.”
“Then, it must be that you would know him if you saw him face to face.”
“As he knew me. He called me by name as he sprang upon me.”
“Well, he’s done for, but I believe the woman will prove the most dangerous. Something tells me she was the real mover in this business.”
“I fancy you are right, Hodge. At first, in Denver, I thought she had been piqued by the manner in which I replied to her, but since all these strange things have happened, I know it was more than a case of pique.”
“When you make a woman your enemy, she is far more dangerous than a man, for women are more reckless—less fearful of consequences.”
“That’s right,” nodded Frank. “Women know they will not be punished to the full extent of the law, no matter what they do. Juries are easily hypnotized by pretty women. Where a woman and a man are connected in committing a crime, and the woman is shown to be the prime mover, a jury will let the woman off as easily as possible. A jury always hesitates about condemning a woman to death, no matter if she has committed a most fiendish murder. In the East, women adventuresses ply their nefarious arts and work upon the sympathies of the juries so that, when called to the bar, they are almost always acquitted. It is remarkable that men should be so soft. It is not gallantry; it is softness. The very man who would cry the loudest if he had been hit by an adventuress is the most eager to acquit the woman in case he happens to be on the jury to pronounce the verdict in her case.”
“Well,” said Hodge, “you are sound and level in that statement, Frank. It’s plain you do not think true chivalry consists of acquitting female blackmailers and assassins.”
“Don’t let this little attempt to injure us frighten you, Hodge,” advised Frank, rising. “I think it will miscarry entirely. We’ve got plenty of work for to-day, and to-night I believe I shall be able to tell beyond a doubt whether ‘True Blue’ is a success or a failure. I think the test will come right here in Puelbo, where we met disaster before.”