Our next care was to quiet Fred Brookhouse, for the present, and punish him, as much as might be, for the future.
Accordingly, Brookhouse was arrested, on a trumped-up charge, and locked up in the city jail, and then Wyman and myself gave to the Chief of police and the Mayor of the city, a detailed account of his scheme to provide attractions for his theater, and took other measures to insure for the Little Adelphi a closer surveillance than would be at all comfortable or welcome to the enterprising manager.
Brookhouse was held in jail until we were out of the city, and far on our way Northward, thus insuring us against the possibility of his telegraphing the alarm to any one who might communicate it to Arch, or Ed. Dwight, and then, there being no one to appear against him, at the proper time, he was released.
Amy Holmes remained a prisoner at the hotel, conducting herself quite properly during the time of her compulsory sojourn there; and on the day of our departure I paid her a sum equivalent to the week's salary she had lost, and bade her go her way, having first obtained her promise that she would not communicate with any of her accomplices; a promise which I took good care to convince her it would be safest to keep.
She was not permitted to see either Mamie or Nellie, and she had no desire to see the other members of the homeward-bound party. And thus ended our case in New Orleans.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HOW BETHEL WAS WARNED.
While Carnes was solving the Groveland problem, in that far-away Southern city, we, who were in Trafton, were living through a long, dull week of waiting.