Blindfolded by Earle Ashley Walcott (recommended ebook reader txt) 📕

the hack, and looked about me anxiously. Was I to meet the Unknown? or was I to take orders from some emissary of my hidden employer? No answering eye met mine as I searched the place with eager glance. Neither woman nor man of all the hurrying crowd had a thought for me.

The hotel carriages rattled away, and comparative quiet once more fell on the court. I looked impatiently about. Was there some mistake? Had the plans been changed? But as I glanced at the clock that ticked the seconds in the office of the hotel I saw that I had been early, and that it was even now but twenty minutes to the hour.

The minute-hand had not swept past the figure VIII when the door opened, there was a hurried step, and two women stood before me, leading a child between them. Both women were closely veiled, and the child was muffled and swathed till its features could not be seen.

One of the women was young, the other older--perhaps middle-aged. Both were tall and well-made. I looked eagerly upon them, for one of them must be the Unknown, the hidden employer whose task had carried Henry Wilton to his death, who held my life in her hands, and who fought the desperate battle with the power and hatred of Doddridge Knapp.

I was conscious of some disappointment, I could not say why. But neither of the women filled the outline of the shadowy picture my fancy had drawn of the Unknown. Neither gave impression of the force and decision with which my fancy had endowed the woman who had challenged the resources and defied the vengeance of the Wolf. So much I took to my thoughts in the flash of an eye as they approached. It was to the younger that I turned as the more likely to have the spirit of contest, but it was the older who spoke.

"Here is your charge, Mr. Wilton," she said in a low, agitated voice. As she spoke, I felt the faint suggestion of the peculiar perfume that had greeted me from the brief letters of the Unknown.

"I am ready for orders," I said with a bow.

It was apparently a mere business matter between us. I had fancied somehow that there had been a bond of friendship, as much as of financial interest, between Henry Wilton and his employer, and felt the sense of disappointment once more.

"Your orders are in this envelope," said the Unknown, hurriedly thrusting a paper into my hand. "Drive for the boat, and read them on the way. You have no time to lose."

The younger woman placed the child in the hack.

"Climb in, Wainwright," said I, eying the youngster unfavorably. "Will he travel with us, ma'am? He's rather young."

"He'll go all right," said the elder woman with some agitation. "He knows that he must. But treat him carefully. Now good-by."

"Oakland Ferry, driver," I cried, as I stepped into the hack and slammed the door. And in a moment we were dashing out into New Montgomery Street, and with a turn were on Market Street, rolling over the rough cobbles toward the bay.


CHAPTER XXII

TRAILED

"Did you see him?" asked Wainwright, as the hack lurched into Market Street and straightened its course for the ferry.

"Who?"

"Tom Terrill. He was behind that big pillar near the arch there. I saw him just as the old lady spoke to you, but before I catches your eye, he cuts and runs."

I felt of my revolver at this bit of news, and was consoled to have the touch of it under my hand.

"I didn't see him," I said. "Keep the child between us, and shoot anybody who tries to stop us or to climb into the hack. I must read my orders."

"All right, sir," said Wainwright, making the child comfortable between us.

I tore open the envelope and drew forth the scented paper with ist familiar, firm, yet delicate handwriting, and read the words:

"Take the train with your men for Livermore. Await orders at the hotel. Protect the boy at all hazards."

Inclosed in the sheet were gold-notes to the value of five hundred dollars--a thoughtful detail for which I was grateful at the outset of such an expedition. I thrust the money into my pocket and pondered upon the letter, wondering where Livermore might be. My knowledge of the geography of California was exceedingly scant. I knew that Oakland lay across the bay and that Brooklyn lay close by, a part of Oakland. I remembered a dinner at Sacramento, and knew Los Angeles on the map. Further than this my ideas were of the most hazy character, and Livermore was nowhere to be found in my geographical memory.

I had some thought of questioning Wainwright, who was busy trying to make friends with the child, but reflecting that I might be supposed to know all about it I was silent. Wainwright's efforts to get the child to speak were without success. The little thing might from its size have been five years old, but it was dumb--frightened, as I supposed, by the strangeness of the situation, and would speak no word.

This, then, was the mysterious boy whose fate was linked so closely with my own; about whose body battled the hirelings of Doddridge Knapp and of my unknown employer; for whom murder had been done, and for whom perhaps many now living were to give up their lives.

Who was he? Whence had he come? What interests were bound up in his life? Why was his body the focus of plot and counterplot, and its possession disputed with a fierce earnestness that stopped at no crime? Perhaps, could he be got to talk, the key of the mystery might be put in my hands. Out of the mouth of the babe I might learn the secret that had racked my brain for days and weeks.

And why was he put thus in my charge? What was I to do with him? Whither was I to carry him? I reproached myself that I had not stopped the Unknown to ask more questions, to get more light on the duties that were expected of me. But the hack on a sudden pulled up, and I saw that we were before the long, low, ugly wooden building that sat square across Market Street as the gateway to San Francisco through which the tide of travel must pass to and from the Golden City.

"Look out on both sides, Wainwright," I cautioned. "You carry the boy and I'll shoot if there's any trouble. See that you keep him safe."

There were nearly ten minutes before the boat left, but the hurry for tickets, the rush to check baggage, the shouts of hackmen and expressmen, the rattle and confusion of the coming and departing street-cars that centered at the ferry, made us inconspicuous among the throng as we stepped out of the hack.

"Here Fitzhugh, Brown," I said, catching sight of two of my retainers, "get close about. Have you seen anything--_any_ signs of the enemy?"

"I haven't," said Fitzhugh, "but Abrams thought he saw Dotty Ferguson over by the Fair Wind saloon there. Said he cut up Clay Street before the rest of us caught sight of him--so maybe Abrams was off his nut."

"Quite likely," I admitted as we turned the jutting corner of the building and came under shelter by the ticket office. "But keep a close watch."

The other four retainers were in the passageway, and I called to the ticket-seller for the tickets to Livermore. By the price I decided that Livermore must be somewhere within fifty miles, and marshaling my troop about the boy, marched into the waiting-room, past the door-keeper, through the sheds, and on to the ferry boat.

I saw no signs of the enemy, and breathed freer as the last belated passenger leaped aboard, the folding gang-plank was raised, and the steamer, with a prolonged blast of the whistle, slid out into the yellow-green waters of the bay.

The morning had dawned pleasant, but the sky was now becoming overcast. The wind came fresh and strong from the south. The white-capped waves were beginning to toss and fret the shallow waters, and the air gave promise of storm. We could see men busy making all things snug on the vessels that swung uneasily to their anchors in the harbor, and tugs were rushing about, puffing noisily over nothing, or here and there towing some vessel to a better position to meet the rising gale. The panorama of the bay, with the smoke-laden city, grim and dark behind, the forest of masts lining its shore, the yellow-green waters, dotted here and there with ships tossing sharply above the white-capped waves that chased each other toward the north, the cloud squadrons flying up in scattered array from the south, and the Alameda hills lying somber and dark under the gray canopy of the eastern sky in front, had a charm that took my mind for the time from the mysterious enterprise that lay before me.

"Keep together, boys," I cautioned my retainers as I recalled the situation. "Has any one seen signs of the other gang?"

There was a general murmur in the negative.

"Well, Abrams, will you slip around and see if any of them got aboard? There's no such thing as being comfortable until we are sure."

In the hurry and excitement of preparation and departure, the orders I had given and received, and the work that filled every moment, I had been conscious of the uneasy burden of a task forgotten. I had surely neglected something. Yet for my life I could not see that we lacked anything. I had my seven retainers, the boy was safe with us, I had my purse, we were well-armed, and every man had his ticket to Livermore. But at last the cause of my troubles came to my mind.

"Great Scott!" I thought. "It's Doddridge Knapp. That little engagement in the stock-market is casting its shadow before."

It seemed likely indeed that the demands of my warring employers would clash here as well as in the conflict over the boy.

Yet with all the vengeful feeling that filled my heart as I looked on the child and called up the memory of my murdered friend, I could but feel a pang of regret at the prospect that Doddridge Knapp's fortune should be placed in hazard through any unfaithfulness of mine. He had trusted me with his plans and his money. And the haunting thought that his fortune was staked on the venture, and that his ruin might follow, with the possible beggary of Luella and Mrs. Knapp, should I fail him at tomorrow's crisis, weighed on my spirits.

My uncomfortable reflections were broken by the clanging engine-bells and the forward movement of the passengers as the steamboat passed into the slip at Long Wharf.

"Stand together, boys," I cautioned my men. "Keep back of the crowd. Wainwright will take the boy, and the rest of you see that nobody gets near him."

"All right," said Wainwright, lifting the child in his arms. "It will take a good man to get him away from me."

"Where's Abrams?" I asked, noting that only six of my men were at hand.

"You sent him forward," said Lockhart.

"Not for all day."

"Well, he hasn't been seen since you told him to find out who's aboard."

I was a little vexed at the seeming neglect of my retainer, and as we had come