The summer flowers were nodding over poor Randall Clayton's lonely
grave, in the lonely cemetery of Woodlawn, on the September day when
a queerly-assorted party of tourists descended from the train in
the little Silesian village of Schebitz. Doctor William Atwater
was tenderly cautious of the comfort of a veiled invalid woman,
at whose side a sturdy nurse aided the watchful medical attendant.
And none of the gaping yokels of the town obtained even a glimpse
of the sick woman's pale face, as she was conducted to the covered
carriage in waiting for the train.
With some show of state, a resplendent courier and a hard-featured
military-looking stranger drove in advance of the carriage, half
hidden in a hooded country droschky. The slanting summer showers
glittered in the half-veiled sunbeams as the party hastily drove
away toward the summer resort, two leagues away, where jaded
fashionables rejoiced in the healing waters of the Louisen Quelle.
But no one of the gaping throng following the "fremden" guessed at
the errand of this motley throng. In silence the cortege proceeded
until a little by-lane covered with overhanging branches was reached,
leading down into a dell where a natural vista showed an old gray
mansion upon a rocky knoll.
An untrimmed forest around still gave its shelter to bird and hare,
starting out from their coverts as the carriages rolled over the
grass-grown, deserted road. "It is a 'Bleak House,'" murmured
Atwater, gazing out of his carriage at the dreary crags of the
Katzen Gebirge towering up, overhanging the neglected demesne. The
young doctor leaned over and then whispered a few words in the
ear of the apparently invalid woman, who was now trembling like a
leaf.
"Remember, Leah," he sternly said, "your boy's life hangs on your
faith now." Atwater moved a heavy pistol holster around under his
loose top-coat, as the droschky in front of them halted. He sprang
lightly out and walked to where the two other men were busied in
an earnest colloquy.
McNerney, pistol in hand, was gloomily gazing at the turrets of
the gray house. "He may escape us," fiercely said the man who had
traveled from New York, eager to clasp the cold steel on "Mr. August
Meyer's" blood-stained hands.
"Not so," calmly answered the disguised Breslau police sergeant, a
sturdy war veteran. "I have hunted here all over the Adler's Horst.
I know every crag and open spot. My soldiers are now hidden in a
circle all around the old house. The moment that our carriage drives
out into the open, they will close in and arrest every living soul.
Do you see that little white flag flying on a pole on that pile of
rocks? That is my signal that all is ready. Come on, now. We may
not be in at the death."
Atwater had marvelled at the rapid work of the officials in their
three-hours' stay at Breslau, and now he admired the skirmishing
tactics of the veteran as the three men dodged from side to side
while the empty carriage slowly drove down into the open.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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