Deficient Saints: A Tale of MaineSaunders, Marshall
General
Deficient Saints: A Tale of Maine
Saunders, Marshall
Maine -- Fiction
The detective fumed and fretted. He would wait one hour longer. He
would wait half an hour. He would only wait ten minutes. He would
announce his secret and receive city aid to go in search of the
criminal. But suppose he had lost him? At station one, station two,
and three, up to the last number of stations, he would be jeered at
in the city of Boston. Why had he not called in the help of some of
his former colleagues? Served him right for playing dog in the manger.
No one would ever trust him again. And he mused on miserably, his
wrath burning higher and higher. At last it reached a point where it
began to flicker. Self-pity and deadly weariness were overcoming him.
His throbbing head sank lower and lower, his aching limbs grew less
remindful. He thought drowsily of his subservient wife, his quiet home,
his comfortable bed. He would give five dollars for an hour's rest, and
with a gradual blending of all his emotions into peaceful oblivion he
fell sound asleep.
He slept he knew not how long, but he waked up with a jerk, and turned
his rubicund face up to Captain White's strangely pale one.
"Your prisoner has come," he said, in a low voice.
H. Robinson tottered to his feet and looked over the roof railing.
Down there was a smooth-lined, shapely yacht rubbing herself like a
snow-white duck against the narrow wharf. Two or three people were
standing about,--he could just make out their dusky outlines. They
were all wonderfully quiet. He must get below, and he hurried down the
steps, carefully placing his feet on the bright places indicated by the
lantern held up to him by Captain White.
Upon arriving on the wharf H. Robinson warily looked about him. Two men
who were evidently servants remained on board the yacht. An old lady,
who was Miss Gastonguay, the chief of police, and a pale youth known in
criminal circles as Sideboard Charlie stood on the boat-house veranda.
This latter had been a favourite and companion of the noted bank
breaker. He was not wanted now on any "count" of his own, and the
detective did not concern himself about him.
But where was his prey,--the lion of the chase?
Captain White pointed to the yacht. A motionless figure wrapped in a
cloak lay on a bench.
H. Robinson suspected a trap. It would not be like the matchless
dissembler to fall into his arms. "You come with me," he said to the
chief.
The latter stolidly accompanied him. "There is your man," he muttered.
The lion was asleep. H. Robinson could wake him, and he laid a hand on
the stiff shoulder, and drew aside the fold of cloth from the marble
face.
Then he stepped back, his face working stupidly. "Dead,--and I am
fooled." He had half suspected this, and he gave place to the two young
men who noiselessly and swiftly placed their hands under the dead man's
body and carried him on shore.
No one spoke; matters must have been prearranged, and in sullen silence
the detective kept up with the party, who in a body marched toward the
house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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