CHAPTER XVII
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
Mr. Pyecroft's grin grew by degrees more delighted: became the smile of a whimsical genius of devil-may-care, of an exultantly mischievous Pan. But he offered not a word of comment upon his work. He was an artist who was, in the main, content to achieve his masterpieces and leave comment and blame and praise to his public and his critics.
He stood up.
"I believe I promised to peel the potatoes and put on the roast," he remarked, and went out.
"Matilda," breathed Mrs. De Peyster, numbed and awed, still aghast, "did you ever dream there could be such a man?"
"Oh, ma'am,—never!"—tragically, wildly.
"Whatever is he going to do next?"
"I'm sure I don't know, ma'am. Almost anything."
"And whatever is going to happen to us next?"
"Oh, ma'am, it's terrible to think about! I'm sure I can't even guess! Mr. Pyecroft, and all the others, and all these things happening—I'm sure they'll be the death of me, ma'am!"
Mrs. De Peyster sprang from her bed. Despite Matilda's cheap dressing-gown which she wore as appropriate to her station, she made a splendid figure of raging majesty, hands clenched, eyes blazing, furiously erect.
"That man is outrageous!" she stormed. "I cannot, and shall not, stand him any longer! We must, and shall, get rid of him!" Her voice rang with its accustomed tone of all-conquering determination. "Matilda, we are going to do it! I say we are going to do it!"
Matilda gazed admiringly at her magnificently aroused mistress. "Of course, you'll do it, ma'am," she said with conviction.
"I cannot endure him another minute!" Mrs. De Peyster raged on. "At once, he goes out of this house! Or we do!"
"Of course, ma'am," repeated Matilda in her adoring voice. And then after a moment, she added quaveringly: "But please, ma'am,—how are we going to do it?"
The outraged and annihilatory Mrs. De Peyster gazed at Matilda, utterer of practical common-places. As she gazed the splendid flames within her seemed slowly to flicker out, and she sank back upon her bed. Yes, how were they going to do it?
In cooler mood they discussed that question, without discovering a solution; discussed it until it was time for Matilda to go downstairs to perform her share of the preparation of the communal dinner. Left alone, her fury now sunk to sober ashes, Mrs. De Peyster continued the exploration of possibilities, with the same negative result.
Matilda brought up her dinner on a tray, then returned to the kitchen; for though the others were all doing fair tasks, to Matilda of twenty years' experience fell the oversight of the thousand details of the house. Presently Mary appeared, on one of her visits of mercy—full of relief that the cabinet-maker had ended his work so soon, thus setting Jack free.
But before beginning the anodynous "Wormwood," she launched into another high-voltage eulogy of Angelica's brother. Even more than they had at first thought was he willing and competent and agreeable in the matter of their common household labor; he was not intrusive; he was rich with clever and well-informed talk when they all laid aside work to be sociable. In fact, as she had said before, he was simply splendid!
"Now, I do hope, Angelica, that you are going to forgive your brother," Mary insisted. "He really means well. I think he's what he is because he has never had a fair chance." And then more boldly: "I think the fault is largely yours and Matilda's. Matilda says your parents died when you were all young; and he admitted that he does not even remember them. And he also admitted, when I pressed him, that you and Matilda had not given him very much attention during his boyhood. You and Matilda are older; you should have brought him up more carefully; you are both seriously to blame for what he is. So I hope," she concluded, "that both of you will forgive him and help him."
Once more Mrs. De Peyster did not feel called upon to make response.
"I have noted particularly that Matilda does not seem cordial and forgiving," Mary was continuing, when the prodigal brother himself dropped in. With her pretty, determined manner, Mary renewed her efforts at reconciliation in the estranged family. Mr. Pyecroft was penitent without being humble, and whenever a question was put directly to Mrs. De Peyster his was the tongue that answered; he was quite certain his sister Angelica would relent and receive him back into her respect and love once he had fully proved his worthiness.
"I must say, Mr. Simpson, that I think you have an admirably forgiving nature," declared Mary. It was clear, though she was silent on the matter, that she considered his sisters to have cold, hard, New England hearts.
Mr. Pyecroft withdrew; and Mary, in the high-pitched voice required by the invalid's misfortune, read "Wormwood" for an hour—until Jack came to the door and announced that Judge Harvey had again called on them. Alone, Mrs. De Peyster pondered her poignant problem, What should she do?—wishful that Matilda were present to talk the affair over with her. But Matilda was still busy in the kitchen with the odd jobs of night-end.
Toward ten o'clock Mr. Pyecroft came in again. He stood and gazed silently down upon her. The one electric light showed her an odd, dry smile on Mr. Pyecroft's face.
"What is it?" Mrs. De Peyster asked in fear.
"Really, Angelica, you're not half so clever as I believed you."
"What is it?" she repeated huskily.
"This pearl." And from a pocket he drew out the pendant he had appropriated the night before in Mrs. Gilbert's boarding-house. "I thought we ought to be prepared with more cash in hand for our get-away when we decide to make it. So an hour ago I slipped out the back way, and made for a safe pawnbroker I know of. Angelica, you're easy. This pearl is nothing but imitation. And you fell for it!" He shook his head sorrowingly, chidingly. "Here's one case where remorse might be highly proper—and safest; better just mail it back to the party you lifted it from."
With good-humored contempt he tossed the pendant upon the bed. Mrs. De Peyster clutched it and thrust it beneath her pillow.
"I believe, Angelica, my dear," he commented, "that in view of the capacity this pearl incident has revealed, it is strictly up to me to assume charge of every detail of our plan."
He sat down and in his fluent manner discussed the day's developments and their preparations for the future; and he was still talking when, fifteen minutes later, the door opened and Matilda entered. Her face, of late so often ashen, was ashen as though almost from habit.
"Oh, oh," she quavered, "the servants' bell rang—and I answered it, like I'd been told to do—and in stepped four men—two of them the policemen we let in last night, and two men I never saw before—and they asked if they might speak to my brother who was visiting me. And I—I promised to call him down. Oh, ma'—Angelica—"
"Mr. Pyecroft, what does this mean?" cried Mrs. De Peyster.
Mr. Pyecroft's usual perfect composure was gone. His face was gleamingly alert; sharp as a razor's edge.
"God knows how they've done it," he snapped out. "But it means they've tracked me here!"
"As—as Thomas Preston?"
"As Thomas Preston."
"And if they take you—they—they may find me, and—"
"Nothing more likely," grimly responded Mr. Pyecroft.
"Then escape!" Mrs. De Peyster cried with frantic energy. "Run! For heaven's sake, run! You still have time!"
"Running from the police is the surest way to get caught when they've got you trapped," he answered in quick, staccato tones. "They've got every door watched—sure. Anyhow—Listen! Hear those steps? They haven't trusted you, Matilda; they've followed. Angelica, down with your face to the wall, and be sick! And while you're at it, be damned sick!"
Mrs. De Peyster obeyed. Mr. Pyecroft drew the room's one chair up beside the bed, sat down, picked up "Wormwood," and again, with the most natural manner in the world, he began to read in a loud voice. The next moment the two policemen of the previous night came in.
Mr. Pyecroft arose.
"I must beg your pardon, officers," he said pleasantly and with a slight tincture of his clerical manner. "My sister Matilda just told me you wished to see me, but I was almost at the end of a very interesting chapter which I was reading aloud to my other sister, who is ill, and so I thought I would conclude the scene before I came down. In what way can I serve you?"
Neither of the officers replied. One closed the doorway with his bulk, and the other thumped heavily down a flight or two of stairs, from whence his shout ascended:—
"We've got him up here, Lieutenant! Come on up!"
Within the tiny room of the second maid no one spoke. Presently heavy footfalls mounted; the second policeman entered, and presently two solid men in civilian dress pushed through the door. The foremost, a dark-visaged man with heavy jaw, and a black derby which he did not remove, fixed on Mr. Pyecroft a triumphant, domineering gaze.
"Well, Preston," he said, "so we've landed you at last."
Mr. Pyecroft, his left forefinger still keeping the place in "Wormwood," stared at the speaker in bewilderment.
"Pardon me, sir, but I completely fail to understand what you are talking about."
"Don't try that con stuff on us; we won't fall for it," advised the lieutenant. He smiled with satiric satisfaction; he was something of a wit in the department. "But if you ain't sure who you are, I'll put you wise: Mr. Thomas Preston, forger of the Jefferson letters, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to yourself. Shake hands, gents."
Mr. Pyecroft continued his puzzled stare. Then a smile began to break through his bewilderment. Then he laughed.
"So that's it, is it! You take me for that Thomas Preston. I've read about him. He must be a clever fellow, in his own way."
He sobered. "But, gentlemen, if I had the clever qualities attributed to Mr. Preston, I am sure I could apply those qualities to some more useful, and even more profitable, occupation."
"You don't do it bad at all, Preston," observed the lieutenant. "Only, you see, it don't go down."
"I trust," Mr. Pyecroft said good-humoredly, "that it isn't going to be necessary to explain to you that I am not Thomas Preston."
"No, that won't be necessary at all," replied the waggish lieutenant. "Not necessary at all. For you can't."
Mr. Pyecroft raised his eyebrows.
"Gentlemen, you really seem to be taking this matter seriously! Why, you two officers in uniform saw me only last night here with my two sisters, and any one in the neighborhood can tell you my sister Matilda has been housekeeper in this house for twenty years."
That tone was most plausible. The two uniformed policemen looked at their superior dubiously.
"Never you mind what they seen last night," the lieutenant commented dryly. "And never you mind about Matilda."
"But you are forgetting that I am Matilda's brother," said Mr. Pyecroft. "Matilda, I am your brother, am I not?"
"Y—yes," testified Matilda, who by the corpulent pressure of four crowded officers was almost being bisected against the edge of the stationary wash-bowl.
"And you, Angelica; I'm your brother, am I not?"
"Yes," breathed Mrs. De Peyster from beneath the bedclothes.
Mr. Pyecroft turned in polite triumph to the lieutenant.
"There, now, you see."
"But, I don't see," returned that officer. "I know you're Thomas Preston. Jim, just slip the nippers on him. And there's something queer about these women. Just slip the bracelets on Matilda, too, and carry downstairs the party in bed. We'll call the police ambulance for her, and take the whole bunch over to the station."
The party in bed suddenly stiffened as if from a stroke of some kind, and Matilda fairly wilted away. Mr. Pyecroft alone did not change by so much as a hair.
"One moment, gentlemen," he interposed in his even voice, "before you go to regrettable extremes. I believe that an even better witness to my identity can easily be secured."
"And who's that, Tommie?"
"I refer to Judge Harvey."
"Judge Harvey!" The lieutenant was startled out of his ironic exultation. "You mean the guy that was stung by them forged letters—the complainant who's making it so damned hot for Preston?"
"The same," said Mr. Pyecroft. "Judge Harvey is at this moment in this house."
"In this house!"
"I believe he is downstairs some place going over some bills Mrs. De Peyster asked him to examine. Matilda, you doubtless know in what room the Judge is working. Will you kindly knock at his door and ask him to step up here for a moment?"
The lieutenant frowned doubtfully at Mr. Pyecroft, hesitated, then nodded to Matilda. The latter, relieved of the pressure of much policial avoirdupois, slipped from the room. The lieutenant turned and silently held a penetrating gaze upon the empty clothes-hooks. Mr. Pyecroft continued to look imperturbably and pleasantly upon the four officers. And under the bedclothes Mrs. De Peyster saw wild visions of Mr. Pyecroft being the next moment exposed, and herself dragged forth to shame.
Thus for a minute or two. Then Judge Harvey appeared in the doorway.
"Lieutenant Sullivan! See here, what's the meaning of this?" he demanded sternly.
"'Evening, Judge Harvey," began the lieutenant, for the first time since his entrance removing his derby. "It's like this—"
"Pardon me," interrupted Mr. Pyecroft. "Judge Harvey, these gentlemen here have been upon the point of making a blunder that would be ludicrous did it not have its serious side. That's why I had you called. The fact is, they desire to arrest me."
"Arrest you!" exclaimed the Judge.
"Yes, arrest me," Mr. Pyecroft went on, easily, yet under his easy words trying to suggest certain definite contingencies. "That would be bad enough in itself. But, as you know, Judge Harvey, my arrest would unfortunately but necessarily involve the arrest of several other quite innocent persons—bring about a great public scandal—and create a situation that would be deplorable in every particular. You see that, Judge?"
Judge Harvey got the covered meaning.
"I see. But what do they want to arrest you for?"
"On a most absurd charge," answered Mr. Pyecroft, smiling,—but eyes straight into Judge Harvey's eyes. "They seem to think I am Thomas Preston."
"Thomas Preston!" cried the Judge.
"Yes, the man that forged those Jefferson letters you bought."
Mr. Pyecroft saw the puzzled semi-recognition that he had observed in the Judge's face the night before flash into amazed, full recognition. Quickly but without appearance of haste, he stepped forward diverting attention from the Judge's face, and made himself the center of the party's eyes.
"You see, lieutenant and officers," he said easily, filling in time to give Judge Harvey opportunity to recover and think—and still aiming his meaning at the Judge, "you see, I have here summoned before you the best possible witness to my identity. You threaten to arrest and expose me and two other persons in this house. Judge Harvey knows, as well as I know, how unfortunate it would be for these parties, and how displeasing to Mrs. De Peyster, if you should make the very great blunder of arresting me as Thomas Preston. Now, Judge Harvey,"—with a joking smile,—"you know who I am. Will you please inform the lieutenant whether I am the man you wish to have arrested?"
Judge Harvey stared, silent, his face twitching.
"Is what he says O.K., Judge?" queried Lieutenant Sullivan. "He ain't the man you want arrested?"
"He is not," the Judge managed to get out.
"From the way you hesitated—"
"The Judge's hesitation, Lieutenant," Mr. Pyecroft interrupted in his pleasant tone, "was due to his amazement at the utter grotesqueness of the situation. He was for a moment utterly taken aback. That's it, isn't it, Judge?"
"Yes," said Judge Harvey.
The lieutenant twisted his derby in chagrined, ireful hands.
"Some of my men have been damned fools again!" he exploded. He got himself back under control. "Judge Harvey, I hope you'll excuse our buttin' in like this—and—and won't find it necessary to mention it to the heads of the department."
"It's—it's all right," said the Judge.
"And you, Mr.—Mr.—"
"Simpson—Archibald Simpson," supplied Mr. Pyecroft.
"Mr. Simpson, I hope you don't mind this too much?"
"No ill feeling at all, Lieutenant," Mr. Pyecroft said graciously. "Such little mistakes must occasionally occur in the most careful police work."
"And—and—there's another thing," said Lieutenant Sullivan with a note of gruff pleading. "You know how the papers are roasting the department just now. For every little slip, we get the harpoon or the laugh. I'll be obliged to you if you don't say anything that'll let this thing get into the papers."
"Believe me, Lieutenant, I shall do everything in my power to protect you," Mr. Pyecroft assured him. "And now, since the matter is settled," he added pleasantly, "perhaps you'd like to have Matilda show you the way out. These upper hallways are really very confusing. Matilda, my dear,—if you don't mind."
Wordlessly, Matilda obeyed, and four sets of policemen's feet went heavily down the stairs. Beneath her bedclothes Mrs. De Peyster began faintly, ever so faintly, to return to life. Judge Harvey glared at Mr. Pyecroft, hands spasmodically clutching and unclutching; his look grew darker and darker. Respectful, regretful, Mr. Pyecroft stood waiting.
His left forefinger had not lost the place in "Wormwood."