第34章 BOOK II:AS SEEN BY DETECTIVE SWEETWATER(13)

"Do.It'll make you look as weak as water.It'll be blonde,of course.""And silky and straggling.Charming addition to my beauty.But it'll take half an inch off my nose,and it'll cover my mouth,which means a lot in my case.Then my complexion!It must be changed naturally.I'll consult a doctor about that.No sort of make-believe will go with this man.If my eyes look weak,they must really be so.If I walk slowly and speak huskily,it must be because I cannot help it.I can bear the slight inconvenience of temporary ill-health in a cause like this;and if necessary the cough will be real,and the headache positive.

"Sweetwater!We'd better give the task to another man -to someone Brotherson has never seen and won't be suspicious of?""He'll be suspicious of everybody who tries to make friends with him now;only a little more so with me;that's all.But I've got to meet that,and I'll do it by being,temporarily,of course,exactly the man I seem.My health will not be good for the next few weeks,I'm sure of that.But I'll be a model workman,neat and conscientious with just a suspicion of dash where dash is needed.

He knows the real thing when he sees it,and there's not a fellow living more alive to shams.I won't be a sham.I'll be it.You'll see.""But the doubt.Can you do all this in doubt of the issue?""No;I must have confidence in the end,and I must believe in his guilt.Nothing else will carry me through.I must believe in his guilt.""Yes,that's essential."

"And I do.I never was surer of anything than I am of that.But I'll have the deuce of a time to get evidence enough for a grand jury.That's plainly to be seen,and that's why I'm so dead set on the business.It's such an even toss-up.""I don't call it even.He's got the start of you every way.You can't go to his tenement;the janitor there would recognise you even if he didn't.""Now I will give you a piece of good news.They're to have a new janitor next week.I learned that yesterday.The present one is too easy.He'll be out long before I'm ready to show myself there;and so will the woman who took care of the poor washerwoman's little child.I'd not have risked her curiosity.Luck isn't all against us.How does Mr.Challoner feel about it?""Not very confident;but willing to give you any amount of rope.

Sweetwater,he let me have a batch of letters written by his daughter which he found in a secret drawer.They are not to be read,or even opened,unless a great necessity arises.They were written for Brotherson's eye -or so the father says -but she never sent them;too exuberant perhaps.If you ever want them -I cannot give them to you to-night,and wouldn't if I could,-don't go to Mr.Challoner -you must never be seen at his hotel -and don't come to me,but to the little house in West Twenty-ninth Street,where they will be kept for you,tied up in a package with your name on it.By the way,what name are you going to work under?""My mother's -Zugg."

"Good!I'll remember.You can always write or even telephone to Twenty-ninth Street.I'm in constant communication with them there,and it's quite safe.""Thanks.You're sure the Superintendent is with me?""Yes,but not the Inspector.He sees nothing but the victim of a strange coincidence in Orlando Brotherson.""Again the scales hang even.But they won't remain so.One side is bound to rise.Which?That's the question,Mr.Gryce."

XVI

OPPOSED

There was a new tenant in the Hicks Street tenement.He arrived late one afternoon and was shown two rooms,one in the rear building and another in the front one.Both were on the fourth floor.He demurred at the former,thought it gloomy but finally consented to try it.The other,he said,was too expensive.The janitor -new to the business -was not much taken with him and showed it,which seemed to offend the newcomer,who was evidently an irritable fellow owing to ill health.

However,they came to terms as I have said,and the man went away,promising to send in his belongings the next day.He smiled as he said this and the janitor who had rarely seen such a change take place in a human face,looked uncomfortable for a moment and seemed disposed to make some remark about the room they were leaving.But,thinking better of it,locked the door and led the way downstairs.

As the prospective tenant followed,he may have noticed,probably did,that the door they had just left was a new one -the only new thing to be seen in the whole shabby place.

The next night that door was locked on the inside.The young man had taken possession.As he put away the remnants of a meal he had cooked for himself,he cast a look at his surroundings,and imperceptibly sighed.Then he brightened again,and sitting down on his solitary chair,he turned his eyes on the window which,uncurtained and without shade,stared open-mouthed,as it were,at the opposite wall rising high across the court.

In that wall,one window only seemed to interest him and that was on a level with his own.The shade of this window was up,but there was no light back of it and so nothing of the interior could be seen.But his eye remained fixed upon it,while his hand,stretched out towards the lamp burning near him,held itself in readiness to lower the light at a minute's notice.

Did he see only the opposite wall and that unillumined window?Was there no memory of the time when,in a previous contemplation of those dismal panes,he beheld stretching between them and himself,a long,low bench with a plain wooden tub upon it,from which a dripping cloth beat out upon the boards beneath a dismal note,monotonous as the ticking of a clock?

One might judge that such memories were indeed his,from the rapid glance he cast behind him at the place where the bed had stood in those days.It was placed differently now.