Blindfolded, Earle Ashley Walcott [non fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

That is Elijah Lane!"

I gazed at her in wonder. Not Doddridge Knapp! Had my eyes played me false?

"Do you not understand?" she said in a low, intense tone. "He is Elijah Lane, the father of the boy. An evil, wicked man--mad--truly mad. He would kill the boy. He killed the mother of the boy. I know, but it is not a case for proof--not a case that the law can touch. And he hates the boy--and me!"

I began to grasp the truth, and recovered speech.

"But why does he want to kill him? And would not the law punish the crime?"

"You do not understand. The boy inherits a great fortune from his mother. Mr. Knapp and I are left trustees by the mother's will. If he had control of the boy, the boy would die; but it would be from cruelty, disease, neglect. It would not be murder in the eye of the law. But I know what would happen. Oh, see the wretch! How he hates me!"

I was stunned with the words I had heard. They made much plain that had puzzled me, yet they left much more in darkness; and I looked blankly at the figure on the other tug. It was truly a strange sight. The man was beside himself with rage, shouting, gesticulating and leaping about the deck in transports of passion. He showed every mark of a maniac.

Suddenly he drew a revolver and sent shot after shot in our direction. We were far beyond the reach of a pistol bullet, but Mrs. Knapp screamed and dodged.

"How he hates me!" she cried again.

When the last shot was gone from his revolver the man flung the weapon in frenzy, as though he could hope to strike us thus.

Then a strange thing happened. Whether due to the effort he had made in the throw, or to a lurch of the tug in the waves we left behind us, or to a stumble over some obstruction, I could not say. But we saw the man suddenly pitch forward over the low bulwarks of the tug into the waters of the bay.

Mrs. Knapp gave a scream and covered her eyes.

"Stop the boat!" I shouted. "Back her!"

The other tug had checked its headway at the same time, and there was a line of six or seven men along its side.

"There he is!" cried one.

The captain laid our tug across the tidal stream that swept us strongly toward Goat Island. Then he steamed slowly toward the other tug.

"He's gone," said Dicky.

The other tug seemed anxious to keep away from us, as in distrust of our good intentions. I scanned the waters carefully, but the drowning man had gone down.

Then, rising not twenty feet away, floating for a moment on the surface of the water, I saw plainly for the first time, the very caricature of the face of Doddridge Knapp. The strong wolf-features which in the King of the Street were eloquent of power, intellect and sagacity, were here marked with the record of passion, hatred and evil life. I marveled now that I had ever traced a likeness between them.

"Give me that hook!" I cried, leaning over the side of the tug. "Go ahead a little."

One of the men threw a rope. It passed too far, and drifted swiftly behind.

I made a wild reach with the hook, but it was too short. Just as I thought I should succeed, the face gave a convulsive twitch, as if in a parting outburst of hate and wrath, and the body sank out of sight. We waited for a few minutes, but there was no further sign. The other tug that had hovered near us turned about and made for the Oakland shore. I signed to the captain to take his course for the city.

The men talked in subdued tones, and I stood half-bewildered, with a bursting sense of relief, by Mrs. Knapp. At last she took her hands from before her eyes, and the first rays of the sun that cleared the tops of the Alameda Hills touched her calm, solemn, hopeful face.

"A new day has dawned," she said. "Let us give thanks to God."


CHAPTER XXX

THE END OF THE JOURNEY

For a few minutes we were silent. Water and land and sky started into new glories at the touch of the rising sun. The many-hilled city took on the hues of a fairy picture, and the windows gleamed with the magic fires that were flashed back in greeting to the god of day. The few cotton-ball clouds that lingered about the mountain-tops, sole stragglers of the army that had trooped up from the south at the blast of the rain-wind, turned from pink to white. The green-gray waters of the bay rippled lightly in the tide as the tug sent the miniature surges trailing in diverging lines from its bow. The curtain of mist that hid the Alameda shore rose and lightened at the touch of the warm rays. The white sails of the high-masted ships scattered through the bay, drooped in graceful festoons as they turned to the sun to rid them of the rain-water that clung to their folds. The ferry-boats, moving with mock majesty, furnished the signs of life to the silent panorama.

It seemed scarcely possible that this was the raging, tossing water we had crossed last night. And the fiery scene of passion and death we had just witnessed was so foreign to its calm beauties, that I could believe it had happened elsewhere in some dream of long ago.

I was roused by the voice of Mrs. Knapp, who sat at the head of the cabin stairs, looking absently over the water.

"I have not dealt frankly with you," she said. "Perhaps it is better that you should know, as you know so much already. I feel that I may rely on your discretion."

"I think I can keep a secret," I replied, concealing my curiosity.

"I should not tell you if I did not have full confidence." Then she was silent for a minute. "That man," she continued at last, with a shudder in her voice, "that man was Mr. Knapp's brother."

I suppressed an exclamation, and she continued:

"They have little in common, even in looks. I wonder you thought for a moment that he was Mr. Knapp. Few people who know them both have traced a resemblance."

"Perhaps those who do not know them would be more likely to find the common points," I suggested. "Members of a family see only the difference that marks one of them from another. The stranger at first sees the family type in all and notes the differences later."

"Yes," said Mrs. Knapp. "It's like picking out the Chinamen. At first they are all alike. We see only the race type. Afterward, we see the many and marked differences."

"I think," said I, leading back to the main subject, "that the remarkable circumstances under which I had seen Mr. Lane had a good deal to do with the illusion. This morning, for the first time, I saw his face under full light and close at hand."

Mrs. Knapp nodded. Then she continued:

"Mr. Knapp and his brother parted thirty years ago in Ohio. The brother--the man who has just gone--was younger than Mr. Knapp, though he looked older. He was wild in his youth. When he left home it was in the night, and for some offense that would have brought him within reach of the law. Mr. Knapp never told me what it was and I never asked. For fifteen years nothing was heard of him. Mr. Knapp and I married, we had come to San Francisco, and he was already a rising man in the city. One day this man came. He had drifted to the coast in some lawless enterprise, and by chance found his brother."

Mrs. Knapp paused.

"And at once began to live off of him, I suppose," I threw in as an encouragement to proceed.

"Not exactly," said Mrs. Knapp. "He confessed some of his rascality to Mr. Knapp, but pleaded that he was anxious to reform. Mr. Knapp agreed to help him, but made the condition that he should take another name, and should never allow the relationship to be known. Mr. Lane--I can not call him by his true name--was ready to agree to the conditions. I think he was very glad indeed to conceal himself under an assumed name, and hide from the memory of his earlier years."

"Had his crimes then been so great?" I asked, as Mrs. Knapp again ceased to speak.

"He had been a wicked, wicked man," said Mrs. Knapp. "The full tale of his villainy I never knew, but he had been a negro stealer,--one of those who captured free negroes or the darkies from Kentucky and Missouri in the days before the war, and sold them down the river. He had been the leader of a wild band in Arkansas and Texas, who made their living by robbing travelers and stealing horses. He had been near death a hundred times, yet he had escaped unhurt. Mr. Knapp helped him. He prospered in business, bought a ranch, and turned farmer. To all appearances, he had reformed completely. No one would suspect in the Sonoma rancher the daring leader of the outlaws in Texas."

"I could believe anything of him," I said grimly.

"You have had a taste of his quality," said Mrs. Knapp. "Well, it was seven years ago that he married. His wife was much younger than he,--a lovely girl, and her parents were rich. How he got her I do not see. It was his gift of the tongue, I suppose, for he could talk well. She was not happy with him, but was better contented when, two years later, her boy came. Mr. Lane was often from home, but I do not think she regretted the neglect with which he treated her. He was not a man who made his home pleasant while he was about. After a while he used to disappear for weeks, spending the time in low haunts in the city, or none knew where. Last year Mrs. Lane's father died, and she came in under the will for more than a million dollars' worth of property. Then Mr. Lane changed his habits. He became most attentive to his wife. He looked to her wants, and appeared to the world as a model husband. But more was going on than we knew. From the little she told me, from the hints she dropped, she must have looked upon him with dread. She failed rapidly in health, and six months ago she died."

"Murdered?" I asked.

"I believe it with all my soul," said Mrs. Knapp. "But there was no evidence--not a particle. I tried to find it, but it was beyond the power of the doctors to discover."

"And his motive?"

"He thought he was heir to her fortune. When he found that she had left it with Mr. Knapp and me, in trust for the boy, his rage was frightful to see. His servants told me of his dreadful ravings. He dared not say a word to Mr. Knapp, but he came and spoke to me about it. I was afraid for my life that time. He said that the money was his, and he said it with such meaning that I felt assured he would stop at nothing to get it. But when he spoke, I cut him so short