Chapter III: Constable Bragg

It had turned ten o’clock. Though the sun was now well up and the sky cloudless, the air continued biting cold and the ground was frozen hard.

It was a branch station at which the two men alighted, and only a single carriage stood at the narrow platform.

More than a mile away, across a dismal sweep of moorland and marshes, could be seen the blue waters of the broad Atlantic, broken by the grim, dark rocks of the peninsula of Nahant. Somewhat nearer was the desolate, gray turnpike making east to the cities of Lynn and Salem. It was the highway of old colonial days, and still was nearly as dreary and void of dwellings as of yore.

In the immediate neighborhood, even, the houses were few and far between, and the surrounding country was rough and hilly, interspersed with farms and wide stretches of woodland.

As the lawyer alighted from the train a short, thickset man approached him. His grim face was not prepossessing, and he was clad in a rough, gray suit, with his pants tucked in at the top of a pair of heavy cowhide boots, which were soiled with mud.

“Be you Mr. French?” he asked bluntly, peering sharply at the lawyer from under his bushy brows.

“Yes,” was the reply. “Who are you?”

“I’m Darbage, sir--Joe Darbage;” and now the fellow touched his woolen cap. “I’m the stablehand up to the house, yonder, and Mr. Thorpe sent me down here to get you. He said you might come by this train. Bad business, this, sir!”

“I see,” nodded the lawyer, who had not recognized the fellow as Moore’s groom and gardener. “Will there be room for my clerk, also?”

“Aye, sir, I reckon so. Tumble in, and I’ll squat in the middle.”

With no observable interest in the bumpkin, who did not quite impress him as a thoroughbred countryman, Sheridan Keene followed the lawyer into the wagon and suffered Mr. Darbage to squeeze his broad hips between them.

“I’d ’a’ come with the carryall if I’d knowed there were two o’ you,” he explained, with a side glance at the face of the detective. “Get up! G’lang!”

“I brought a clerk, thinking I might need him,” said Mr. French, as the vehicle rattled over the rough road.

“I reckon there’ll be room enough, now the old man’s gone,” returned Darbage irreverently. “There wa’n’t room for no extras, though, when he was alive.”

“Then old Jacob is really dead, is he?”

“Aye, sir, as dead as he’ll ever be in this world. Can’t say what he’ll come to in the next.”

“Well, this world is the one we have most to do with while in it,” said the lawyer, with some austerity. “What are the particulars? I have only Mr. Thorpe’s telegram saying Jacob had been murdered.”

Darbage looked up without a change of countenance.

“Aye, sir, he was murdered, right enough,” said he, in his grim fashion. “Ma’am Haynie found him dead in bed this morning, with two knife slits atween his ribs, and most of his blood run out of his body, which wasn’t much, at that.”

“Is it known when the crime was committed?”

“I reckon not, sir, though I’m not sartin. Jim Bragg, the constable, is up there nosing round and looking as wise as an owl; but I can’t say what he’s l’arned. They don’t tell me much.”

“Is Mr. Thorpe at the house?”

“Aye, sir; he’s been down here nigh a week.”

“Isn’t that quite a long visit for him?”

“The ole man ain’t been over well, so Mr. Thorpe stayed on his account.”

“And Mabel?”

“Mr. Thorpe sent her word this morning, and she came right up. Fust time she’d been in the house since the ole man kicked her out. I reckon there’s the coroner driving in, sir. I heerd ’em say they’d sent for him.”

The ride from the station had been of brief duration, and they now came in view of a large country house, situated somewhat off the road. A glance at the place indicated the character of its late owner. The dwelling, once a mansion, was now out of repair; and the surrounding acres of woodland and meadows had run rank as they pleased.

A large stable was at the rear and at one side of the house, and the faded old gray mare, behind which Jacob Moore had been wont to ride, ambled up the driveway between the elms as if eager to reach her stall.

But grim Mr. Darbage drew her down at the side door of the house, which was immediately opened by a young woman in dark attire, whose pale, pretty face and red eyes at once suggested to Keene her identity.

“Oh, Mr. French!” she exclaimed, approaching with much emotion to greet him; “I am so glad you have come! My poor father has met with----”

But the kind old lawyer took her in his arms, and silenced her with a more loving kiss than the father mentioned had ever given her in all her worthy and gentle girlhood. He led her in, and took her alone to the library; while Sheridan Keene, already at work on the case in his quiet way, followed them as far as the broad hall.

Though things wore the aspect of years of service, the large house was comfortably furnished, and the general cleanliness and order suggested the care of a capable housekeeper.

The sound of voices from a room off one side of the hall now reached the detective’s ears, and in an affair of this kind Sheridan Keene did not stand upon ceremony. He at once approached the room, the door of which stood partly open.

It was a large, square bedroom, with two windows. A broad fireplace was at one end, but the half-burned logs were cold and dead, and the air was very chilly. A bed occupied the opposite end of the room, and there, upon its bloodstained linen, stiff and cold in death, lay the figure of a thin-faced, gray-haired old man, whose face in death, even, still carried an expression of that severity and hardness which had marked all the latter years of his life.

Three men were standing near the bed, and one, evidently a physician, was examining the body.

“The man has been dead many hours, not less than twelve, I should say,” he observed, as Sheridan Keene stepped softly into the room. “It is a shocking crime!”

“Can anything be done?” asked a tall, broad-shouldered young man at his elbow.

The physician shook his head.

“Not for him,” he replied. “You had better do nothing here, Mr. Thorpe, until after the arrival of the coroner.”

Sheridan Keene looked the latter over. He was a well-built man of twenty-five, this nephew of the deceased. He had a frank and rather attractive face, with dark eyes and hair, and was the style of a man most women would have fancied, despite Mabel Moore’s evident aversion to marrying him. His features were pale now, and his manner gravely composed.

“I have already sent for the coroner, doctor,” he replied.

“Let everything remain as it is, then, until he comes.”

“He should be here now.”

“It is a case, I think,” added the physician, “which will require capable investigation. Would it not be well to send into Boston for a competent detective?”

“I have sent for Lawyer French, my uncle’s solicitor,” replied Thorpe, “and I shall place matters entirely in his hands on his arrival. I think that would be my uncle’s own wish if he were alive, instead of lying there, the victim of perfidious cowardice and foul play; and I shall be governed accordingly. I think I had better---- Beg pardon, sir! Who are you?”

He had turned slightly, and now observed Sheridan Keene standing just within the threshold.

The detective approached with a grave bow, and without a glance at the gruesome figure on the bed.

“My name is Keene, and I am Mr. French’s clerk,” he explained politely. “I have just arrived with the attorney.”

“Oh, yes. Excuse me!” cried Thorpe, quickly offering his hand. “Where is Mr. French?”

“He is in the library with Mrs. Jeffrey!”

“I must see him at once!”

“Oh, by the way,” and Thorpe quickly turned back, “this is Doctor Carr, our local physician, Mr. Keene, and this is Mr. Bragg, the constable. They will give you any information you may desire, and I shall now request Mr. French to take entire charge of this dreadful affair. He will know all about the law bearing upon it, of which I know nothing. You will excuse me, won’t you?”

The detective bowed and gravely acknowledged the introduction to the two men remaining, while Richard Thorpe hurried from the room to seek the attorney.

Sheridan Keene sized up at a glance the two men left in his company.

The physician was an ordinary old gentleman, and presented nothing of interest. Not so, however, the other.

Jim Bragg was a burly man, with coal-black eyes and a bushy beard. He was a capital fellow for battering down a door and entering a dive of lawless ruffians, where indomitable courage was an absolute requisite; for such an occasion, you would have to go far to find Jim Bragg’s better. But the ferreting out of a cunning, well-wrought piece of knavery was utterly beyond Mr. Bragg’s ability.

But Mr. Bragg did not think so. All he wanted, or had ever wanted, as he said, was an opportunity. And it now had happened, like a long-awaited dream, when the news of Jacob Moore’s murder was published that morning; and, as he left his own home and hastened across the meadows toward the immediate scene of the tragedy, his mind, stimulated by the occasion, was filled with vague visions of startling stories in the city dailies, with the name of Detective Bragg in scare-head letters and thrilling depiction of the marvelous deeds of this new Vidocq, to say nothing of renown handed down to posterity, and the probable demand for his immediate services in Pemberton Square.

This was the man to whom Sheridan Keene now turned, with a glance that at once took in the constable’s chief characteristics.