Chapter XX

JERRY BUCK PLAYS THE PART OF A DETECTIVE AGAIN.

It was after eight o'clock when Mr. Elijah Callister left the ---- Building, Broad street, by the side door opening upon Exchange Place, and the night had turned off cold.

Detective Cutts was still with him, and buttoning their overcoats about them, both hurried off in the direction of William Street, with the air of men having business on hand.

As for Frank Mansfield, he had left the office of the stock-broker a good three hours before, with his mind full of doubts and fears.

"My daughter is quite capable of taking care of herself, Mr. Maxwell," the broker had said in his usual oily tones, as Frank returned to the office after the little scene enacted at the elevator door. "In future I beg you will be less attentive to any ladies who may chance to favor my office with a visit."

With this rebuke he had shut himself up in the private office with Mr. Billy Cutts again, and was seen no more up to the usual hour for closing the office, when Frank, without attempting to even say good-night, simply put on his hat and walked out, wholly undetermined as to whether his hasty communication with Miss Edna Callister had been overheard.

As the stock broker and the detective hurried along the southerly side of Exchange place--we mean the side where the street dealers in government bonds spend their entire time during business hours in leaning against the iron railings of the basement offices awaiting customers for their wares--there crept out from a doorway a ragged, shivering newsboy, hugging a great bundle of the evening papers tightly under his arm.

Shooting a hasty glance at the men before him, he bounded ahead over the icy sidewalk, shouting at the top of his voice:

"Fo'rt Commercial, Nooiz or Telegram! Evenin' papers, gents?"

Evidently the "gents" were disinclined for the evening paper, for Callister, rudely pushing the boy aside, crossed William street and paused opposite the great stone building occupied by the Lispenard Bank, one of the wealthiest of the wealthy financial institutions in New York.

For an instant only the pause was made; but during that instant the stock broker, with a hurried glance up and down the street--there was no one but the newsboy in sight, and he was half a block away--unrolled a stiff paper plan which he took from under his coat, and giving one end of it to Cutts to hold, pointed first at the plan and then at the building of the Lispenard Bank again.

"Fo'rt Commercial! Nooiz! Telegram or German! Evenin' paper, gents?"

Again the newsboy stood by their side, looking almost over their shoulder at the plan they held between them, as he thrust his bunch of papers in the broker's face.

"No, you young imp!" exclaimed Callister. "These newsboys are thicker than flies about here. I tell you, Billy, there's no trouble about it--no trouble at all. An entrance can be effected as easy as rolling off a log. And as to money, why, good Lord, it's the clearing house, you know, and there's always money there. Come, let's get down and show these to your father, and see what he thinks of the idea."

He rolled up the plans hastily, and putting them under his overcoat, moved off up William street toward Wall, the detective keeping pace by his side.

At that moment the newsboy crept out from under the shadows of the Custom House fence and followed them, dodging from one side of the street to the other, calling his papers, and occasionally stopping to sell one, but always keeping the forms of Messrs. Cutts and Callister plainly in view.

"I've got yer now, yer sly old rat!" he muttered, as he crossed Wall street close at their heels. "An', by gracious, I orter after all the time I spent a-watchin'. I seen them papers wat's got the picter of the Lispenard bank onter them. If she an' me don't spoil yer little game this time 'twon't be no faalt of Jerry Buck's, an' don't yer forget it!"

Who "she was" did not appear as yet.

Certainly, in his present position, Master Jerry Buck was playing the part of a detective quite alone.

Down William street to Liberty, down Liberty to its junction with Malden Lane, down Malden Lane to Pearl street the men advanced, all unconscious of the ragged youth who followed close at their heels.

Turning to the left, they kept along Pearl street, beneath the shadows of the great structure of the elevated railroad, nor did they make another turn until Franklin Square was reached.

And when they passed beneath the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge and entered Cherry street, smelling of a thousand and one ill odors, suggestive of anything save the luscious fruit from which its name is derived, Jerry Buck was still behind them.

He had ceased to call his papers now, but stood silently watching them from between two empty trucks drawn up by the side of the curbstone, as they entered the very house on the easterly side of Cherry street, just beyond Catherine, which he had pointed out to Frank Mansfield upon the occasion of their Sunday morning visit to the Catherine Market as the one into which the burglars of the Webster Bank had disappeared.

No sooner had the two men passed through the doorway than the newsboy, pulling his tattered felt hat low down over his eyes, quietly crossed the street, entered the house himself, and crept silently after them up the rickety stairs, just in time to see Detective Cutts, the man paid by the City for the detection of crime, and Mr. Elijah Callister, the pious brother of the Tenth Baptist Church, disappear within the rear room on the second landing of the tenement, the door of which was immediately closed.

Then Jerry Buck, giving utterance to a peculiar chuckle, slipped past the door, mounted still another pair of stairs and tapped lightly upon the panels of the door of the room immediately above.

It was presently opened, and a woman's head and shoulders thrust out into the hall.

"Is that you, Jerry?"

"Yes, missus, it's me."

The door was softly opened wide and closed again, the boy slipping into the room.

"Them fellers meets down-stairs again to-night, missus. They means business this time, and no mistake."

"Is he there?" asked the woman.

"You bet! Didn't I jest see him go in! I've been a-layin' for him, a-followin' of him since five o'clock. Cutts the detective is with him, too."

"You are a good boy, Jerry," said the woman, tears springing to her eyes. "God will reward you for what you've done for me."

"Do you think so, missus? 'Twan't much, after all. When I seed you a-tryin' to jump inter the river I stopped you. When you told me yer troubles, an' how that old mean snide, Callister, had robbed your husband and killed him, an' how he had treated you an' was a-tryin' to treat yer boy, why I jest took a-holt an' helped yer, an' the rest has come about of itself."

For reply, the woman stroked the boy's tumbled hair, and then, as if moved by some sudden impulse, stooped and kissed him.

"Looka here!" exclaimed Jerry, half pleased, half ashamed. "I never had no one do that to me before, but then you seem somehow jest as though you were my own mother, so I suppose it's all right."

"And you never knew your mother?" asked the woman, regarding the boy with a wistful air.

She was a person who had evidently seen much sorrow.

Tall and thin, with gray hair tied tightly in a knot behind her head, poorly but respectably dressed, there was about her an unmistakable air of refinement, indicative of quite a different position in life from the one in which we now find her.

For surely the carpetless room, cheap table and chairs, the little stove and scanty display of common dishes through the half open closet door were indicative of anything but plenty and comfort, to say the least.

But they were miles and miles ahead of anything Jerry Buck was accustomed to, and he regarded them with an almost respectful air, as he replied:

"No, missus, I never had no father nor mother as I remember. I've always lived about the streets."

"But you must have some early remembrances," continued the woman. "Can't you tell me what they are?"

"Yes, some other time. Them fellers have been in the room below for full five minutes. If we are a-goin' to ketch onto their racket, we'd better be about it, I should say."

And as he spoke Jerry Buck, creeping behind the stove, threw himself flat on his stomach upon the uncarpeted floor, close by the mouth of a small round hole, through which in some former time, when the house had been occupied by the old Quaker families once resident in this part of New York, a stove-pipe had passed, conveying heat to this upper chamber from the room beneath.

A thin sheet of paper covered the opening upon the ceiling in the room below them, through which a light could be seen shining dimly and the sounds of men's voices distinctly heard.

The woman now seated herself likewise upon the floor, and, in common with the boy, bent over the hole.

Had they been in the chamber beneath them, they could not have heard the words of its occupants more plainly.

Sound rises, as is well known to every one. Through the round opening every syllable uttered fell with startling distinctness upon their ears.

"I tell you the job's an immense one, Rube, whether Sam Cutts can see it or not."

"That's old Callister," murmured Jerry in a low whisper.

"Hush!" replied the woman, speaking in tones equally low, at the same time holding up her hand. "I know his wicked voice only too well, I'm not likely to forget the voice of one who has brought the ruin he has done upon me and mine."

"Well, I'm not kicking," came a man's voice up the tube.

"The plan looks all right, and Lije talks all right. It's a big scheme on paper, but the question is, won't it prove another Webster bank affair? Providin' it works, will there be enough shug in the vault to pay us for our trouble? That's what I want to know in advance."

"Why, it's the Clearing House for all the other banks, man," replied Callister's voice, impatiently. "There's always money, thousands upon thousands, in the vaults of the Lispenard bank, I'm a director in it myself, and I guess I ought to know."

"And these plans----"

"Are drawn from personal knowledge of the interior of the bank and its vault. Let me tell you, Sam Cutts, this is the biggest thing of the kind I ever put you on to. Billy here knows that I'm giving it to you straight."

"Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!" Both Jerry Buck and the woman were upon their feet in an instant.

The rapping was upon the door of the room in which the listeners were.

"Who can it be!" whispered the woman, turning pale.

"Give it up. Better throw suthin over the hole while I open the door an' see. It's some of the neighbors have come to borry suthin', most like, or a peddler mebbe."

"Rat-tat-tat! Rat-tat-tat!"

The boy hastily crossed the room, and turning the key, cautiously opened the door upon the crack.

Instantly a man sprang into the room, and seizing Jerry by the shoulders with a vise-like grip, clapped one hand over his mouth.