Chapter XXVI

ELIJAH CALLISTER ADDS STILL ANOTHER CRIME TO THE LIST.

It was well on toward three o'clock in the morning when P. Slattery, the red-headed proprietor of the Donegal Shades, was aroused from his sleep in the back room behind his saloon by a loud knocking upon the outer door.

"Now who the blazes can that be?" he muttered. "It's too early for the market-men, I'm sure. Must be some drunken tramp who hain't got full enough widout disturbin' an honest man in his bed. Go way wid yez, ye spalpeen! It's not Pat Slattery that'll open the dure for yez the night."

Thump--thump--thump!

Upon the door the knocks were rained with redoubled strength.

"Begorra, an' I'm afeard it's break me dure in he'll be after doin'," muttered the saloon-keeper, tumbling sleepily out of bed.

He crept across the darkened bar-room, and pulling aside the curtains cautiously, peered out into the deserted street.

Two men stood without.

P. Slattery recognized in their faces Messrs. Callister and Tisdale at a glance.

The stock-broker was in his shirt sleeves and hatless. He was shivering with the cold, while Reuben Tisdale, pale and haggard, stood to one side with his eyes fixed upon the ground.

The sound of the movement at the curtain, slight as it had been, had not escaped Mr. Callister's ears.

"Open the door, Pat, for God's sake!" he whispered, pressing his face to the glass. "Rube's gone crazy, I think, and I'm almost perished with the cold."

"Be the pipers! an's there's suthin' gone wrong!" muttered the saloon-keeper. "It's the ould boy himself that's to pay, I'm afeard."

He hastily undid the fastening of the door.

Callister and Tisdale entered the saloon.

"Some whisky, quick, Pat," exclaimed the former, his teeth chattering as he spoke. "We have had Satan's own time of it getting here, and you must give us a shake down for the balance of the night."

"An' I'll do that same wid pleasure, Mr. Callister," cried the Irishman, with the good nature proverbial of his race, as he bustled behind the bar. "Howly mother! but yer gills is as blue as indigo. What happened ye that ye lost the coat an' the hat?"

"It's a story that'll take too long to tell, Pat. There, that's better"--he had emptied the glass of raw spirits at a gulp. "Now show us where we can sleep."

"It's no use, Lije," said Tisdale gloomily. "You had best light out and save yourself while you can. I shall have no peace until poor Maria's death is avenged. I'm going now to give myself up to the police; to see the spirit of my murdered wife again would kill me. I can't stand it any longer and I won't. As I told you before, I'm the Jonah of the gang."

The eyes of Elijah Callister blazed with evil light.

"You are, eh?" he hissed between his tightly set teeth. "So you are going to give yourself up, and ruin your friends, you soft-hearted fool--you man of putty--you--you---- Ain't it enough to have lost these plans, to have gone through what we have, without----"

He stopped, backed toward the bar, and, glaring at his companion, leaned heavily against it.

Unseen by either Slattery or Tisdale, his hand stole behind him like a flash, grasping a large cheese-knife which lay upon the bar of the "Donegal Shades," carelessly left there by the proprietor himself after cutting up the free lunch which it was his custom each night to spread.

"Is your mind made up, Reuben Tisdale? Will no argument bring you to reason? Speak--you had best be quick."

"No--I am resolved to do it, Lije, no matter what you say. I tell you still again I can't help it; I'm doomed to be the Jonah of the gang."

He stood dejectedly by the stove, his eyes fixed upon the sanded floor.

With measured step the man at the bar advanced toward him, one hand still held behind his back.

"And do you know what the men on the ship did to Jonah?" he hissed. "No? Then I'll tell you--they threw him overboard, as I now throw you, Reuben Tisdale, and the pit beneath this house, which already numbers its victims by the score, is the whale, and will swallow up the Jonah of the gang to which you and I belong, and you can bet your sweet life that from out of the depths of that whale's belly you'll never come forth to give my secrets away!"

The words had not fully left his lips when with a sudden spring, his now upraised hand descended, and Reuben Tisdale fell to the floor with a groan.

* * * * *

And while these events are transpiring how fares it with our old friend, Mr. Detective Hook.

"Why, he is dead!" did we hear some one exclaim?

Not at all.

Detectives, as a race, are hard to kill, and Caleb Hook offers no exception to his class!

Beneath the cellar of the Donegal Shades lies that brave man, neither dead nor helpless, but able to stand erect and move about, eagerly longing to escape.

And no wonder.

The foul pit in which he found himself confined was damp and slimy--filled with a thousand noisome smells.

For an hour and more after the body of the unconscious detective had been dropped through the trap-door by Callister and Cutts he remained lying unconscious upon the muddy floor of the place into which he had fallen, an old sub-cellar, used in former days by the occupants of the building, but long since abandoned on account of its dampness and from the fact that it was filled to the brim with the water of the East River at every tide rising above the usual height.

But Caleb Hook was not dead.

No.

By a merciful Providence the ball from the burglar's pistol, missing by a hair's breadth a vital part, touched a certain nerve, well understood by the medical profession, glanced from the accompanying muscle and buried itself in a fleshy spot, leaving its victim in a state of suspended animation, practically unharmed.

Its action upon that nerve spent, and the eyes of Caleb Hook opened to life once more.

Where he was or how he came there were two questions which he was unable to decide.

Matches which he always carried soon revealed to him the nature of the place--damp, foul-smelling cellar that it was, with the only outlet the trap-door through which he had fallen, a good five feet above his head.

Beyond a feeling of great weakness, he felt neither fear nor pain.

That he had been thrown there as dead he understood perfectly well, and yet--brave heart that he was--he refused to banish hope.

The hours passed.

Caleb Hook has exhausted every means to reach that trap above him, but in vain.

Crouched in a corner we see him now, his head buried in his hands.

Through the foul place the rats scurry past, but he heeds them not--his thoughts are upon the strange case in following which he has come to this living death.

The robbery of the Webster bank--the following of the strange woman--the murder of Mrs. Marley and her singular reappearance in the church-yard later on, passed one after another in hopeless procession through his mind.

The capture of the burglar, Joe Dutton, the man who dropped the dollars at the Catherine Market--whom we should have stated before was arrested by a policeman on Cherry street before he had run a dozen yards--and his untimely death also rose up before him.

That he had been poisoned by his associates in crime the detective could not doubt.

And the thought gave him no courage.

If these scoundrels had no mercy to share to their own what hope was there for him?

Hark! What sound was that?

Surely there are footsteps walking on the floor above?

Springing to his feet he stares wildly at the trap-door above his head.

It moves! It opens! But alas! it opens not in aid to him!

There is a low murmuring of voices, and suddenly the body of a large and powerful man drops through the open trap, falling heavily at the detective's feet.