Part 16 (1/2)
”Undoubtedly,” I interrupted, ”I'm sure I could do it at this moment!”
Harcout looked at me quickly, but as I was gazing at the ceiling as if in deep thought, he went on quite enthusiastically:
”Exactly. They learn it early. They will swindle at sixteen, rob at eighteen; blackmail at twenty; and kill a man any time after that!”
”Why, Harcout are _you_ a woman-hater?” I laughingly asked, notwithstanding my annoyance.
”Oh, no,” he suddenly replied; ”but I had a friend who once suffered from very much the same sort of a woman as this Mrs. Winslow, and she was not eighteen years old either. But to resume: Get this point in her life, and the rest--hem!--the rest reads right on like the chapters of a book!”
”And then what?” I ventured to ask.
”Then what?” he asked indignantly; ”go for her through the newspapers.
Drive her out of the country. Make it impossible for her to ever return;” and then, as if reflecting, ”ruin her altogether. Any reporter will listen to you if you have anybody to ruin! In fact, get up an excitement about it and show her up.”
”And try your case in the newspapers instead of in the courts?” I added, ”which would have the effect of leaving the matter at the end just where it was at the beginning, with nothing proven, and Mr. Lyon still at the mercy of any future surprise the woman might conceive a fancy of springing upon him.”
But there was no means of changing this lofty gentleman's opinions, and these interviews were always necessarily closed by the threat on my part that I would have nothing further to do with the matter if I was not allowed to conduct my operations according to my own judgment in the light of my own large experience upon such matters, and Mr. Harcout would depart in a most dignified and frigid manner, as though it were a ”positively last appearance,” only to return the next day with more objections and a new batch of suggestions, which were given me for ”what they were worth,” as he would remark, and we would fight our battles all over again, with the stereotyped result.
I saw Mr. Lyon very seldom, and he always approached me in the timid, reluctant way in which he had come into my office when the case was first begun; but, contrary to what I had antic.i.p.ated through Harcout's injunctions to ”push things” and crush the woman out, he approved of my course throughout, and seemed wonderfully pleased that everything had been conducted so quietly and yet so effectively. Of course he shrank from the trial and the miserable sort of publicity all such trials compel; but he was _more_ fearful of the woman's future unexpected and sudden sallies upon him, which both he and myself were satisfied would be made at her convenience or whim, and was only too glad to agree to any course which would compel silence and peace.
At Rochester everything was working smoothly. After Bristol had become located, his first work was to secure the admission to Mrs. Winslow's rooms of Fox, as Lyford, which was done by representing that, the same day he had himself gone there, he had suddenly come upon a sort of relative of his who was a book-keeper in a wholesale house on Mill street, and who was boarding at the Osborn House, and would be glad to make some arrangement whereby he might live comfortably, be near his business, and take his meals when and where he pleased. Thinking he would be more pleasantly situated, and, at the same time, be able to economize somewhat, Bristol said he had recommended Mrs. Winslow's rooms very highly and that Lyford had agreed to call and take a look at the place, which he did, making a good impression, and arranging to have his baggage sent the next day.
The rooms were situated so that the two detectives in a measure had their quarry surrounded, or, at least, completely flanked. The halls of the floor intersected each other at right angles at the top of the stairs, and Mrs. Winslow's reception-room was at the right, as the hall was entered from the stairway, while her sleeping-room could only be reached from this sitting-room, although being situated next the hall running parallel with the front of the building, while Bristol had shrewdly secured another sleeping-room fronting on St. Paul street, similar in size to Mrs. Winslow's, adjoining hers, and also, like hers, opening into the reception-room, which they had agreed to use in common, as it seemed that the fair landlady was all of a sudden, for some reason, becoming close and penurious. Fox's room was across the hall immediately opposite Mrs. Winslow's, as he had expressed a strong desire to be as near his cousin, Mr. Bristol, as possible, so that by chance and a little careful work the parties were located with as much appropriateness as I could possibly have wished for. The operatives each paid a month's rent in advance, taking receipts for the same, and immediately began paying particular attention to all parties who came in and out of the building, circulated freely among the Spiritualists of the city, and got on as good terms as possible with the charming landlady, who seemed at times to be a little suspicious of her surroundings, as it introduced altogether too many strange faces to suit a person who had a no clearer conscience than she had.
From the gay, das.h.i.+ng woman she had been, she became unpleasantly suspicious. She explained this to Bristol and Fox as arising from unfavorable visions and revelations from the spirits through the different mediums she had employed to give her the truth about her case with Lyon. The rooms had filled up rapidly with people whom the operatives had taken pains to ascertain all about, and who, as a rule, were honest folks; but Mrs. Winslow could not get it out of her mind that some of them were spies from Lyon, and were watching her in everything that she did.
There had been nothing whatever done to alarm her on the part of my men; but the fact alone that here were a dozen people all about her, any one of whom might at any time spring some sudden harm upon her, began to affect her as the fear she had all her life inspired in others had affected them; and she began to form a habit of talking pleasantly on ordinary subjects, and then turning abruptly and almost fiercely upon Bristol and Fox, who were now the only persons left whom she would at all trust--even distrusting them--with a series of questions so vital, and given with such wonderful rapidity, that it required the best efforts of the operatives to parry her home-thrusts and quiet her regarding them.
It was a question in my mind whether she had laid by a large sum of money or not. Years before she had several thousand dollars; up to the time she came to Rochester she had had the reputation of never paying a bill, and, however hedged in she might be by justice, jury, constables, or sheriff, she not only escaped incarceration, but beat them all without paying any manner of tribute. She had done a fair business in duping Spiritualists and other weak-minded people while in Rochester; she had evidently levied upon Devereaux often and largely, and to my certain knowledge had taken some thousands of dollars from Lyon, and I was at a loss to know why she was growing so grasping and exacting as the reports showed was true of her; for she soon complained of being poor, levied additional a.s.sessment for care of the rooms, insisted upon her tenants receiving sittings at a good round price from her, and in general dropped the veneer which had formerly made her extremely fascinating, and became, save in exceptional moments of good nature, a masculine, repulsive shrew, who, with a slight touch of hideousness, might have pa.s.sed for a stage witch or a neighborhood plague.
CHAPTER XIX.
Mrs. Winslow becomes confidential.-- Some of her Exploits.-- Her Plans.-- A Sample of Legal Pleading.-- A fishy Story.-- The Adventuress as a Somnambulist.-- Detective Bristol virtuously indignant.-- Failing to win the ”Retired Banker,” Mrs. Winslow a.s.sails Detective Fox with her Charms.
After a time Bristol and Fox became Mrs. Winslow's only confidants.
Their business was to become so, and they successfully accomplished their object. As Bristol said in one of his reports: ”Only set her tongue wagging, and she spouts away as irresistibly as an artesian well.”
Had she been possessed of womanly instinct in the slightest degree, this would have been impossible. But being a male in everything save her physical structure, it was quite natural that she should hobn.o.b with those most congenial; and as she had antagonized all her lodgers save my operatives, and they made a particular effort to keep up a good-natured familiarity, the three were certainly on as easy terms as possible, and pa.s.sed the autumn evenings, which were growing long now, in conversation of an exceedingly varied nature, with an occasional sitting or seance, and not infrequently a visitation of spirits of more material character; and the following are a few of the many facts in this way brought out, and by Bristol and Fox transmitted to me at New York in their daily mail reports.
In one of Mrs. Winslow's peregrinations, probably for blackmail purposes, she secured the indictment in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, of one George Hodges, for swindling. He was not at that time arrested, but a year or so after, finding that he was in Cincinnati, and claiming that he was a non-resident, had him arrested as a fugitive from justice.
When the case was called before an obscure justice, no prosecuting witness appeared, whereupon Hodges was discharged and at once secured a warrant against her for perjury, but afterwards withdrew it. Meantime the woman shook the dust of Cincinnati from her feet and repaired to St.
Louis, where she began several suits against parties there, notably one against a leading daily newspaper of that city, from which she afterwards secured one thousand dollars damages for libel. She afterwards swung around the circle to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where she obtained from the Governor of that State a requisition on the Governor of Ohio, at Columbus, upon whom she waited and requested him to designate her as the person to whom should be delegated the power under the law to convey the fugitive, Hodges, to the Keystone State; but the private secretary of the Governor of Ohio suspecting that the person who had presented the papers, and for whose benefit they had been issued, would make improper use of them, they were returned to the Governor of Pennsylvania, whereupon she had made Columbus ring with denunciations of gubernatorial corruption, and threatened to cause the impeachment of Pennsylvania's Executive, although those two commonwealths were never completely shattered by her.
Again in conversation regarding her case, which now seemed never out of her mind or off her tongue, she informed Bristol confidentially that she intended keeping Lyon in the dark altogether, giving him and his counsel no inkling as to what course she intended to pursue, which would so worry him that he would be glad to settle for at least twenty-five thousand dollars, rather than have the case come to trial and be exposed as she would expose him; and if he did not settle at the last moment, she would have subpnas issued for Lyon's mother-in-law, all his children, several other women who, the spirits had revealed, had been similarly betrayed, and even Lyon himself, and then she _would_ make a sensation.
At this stage she was positive he would settle, as she knew he was half worried to death about the matter; and besides this, he knew that she knew he had told a certain lawyer of the city that he had once loved her better than any other woman on earth, and the only reason he had discarded her was that he was sure her love had taken hold on his pocket and forsaken himself.
She had signed a release of all claims, but she would stoutly maintain that it was fraudulently secured, which would only further establish the fact that she had had a valid claim upon him. Nor did she fear the opposing counsel. She was lawyer enough to attend to her own case, she said. Her legal knowledge helped her through many a difficulty, and as she had been lawyer enough to file a declaration, she could get a rejoinder in shape whenever the answer should appear upon the court records. Oh, she knew how to handle a jury; she had done it before! In _this_ case she would say: ”Gentlemen of the jury:--There are many who believe that I merely seek for money. This is not true. I ask for a verdict that I may gain a husband. For all of the injury that I have received--lost time, lost money, lost reputation, years of suspense and hope deferred--I only ask for a verdict in consonance with what a man in Lyon's position should be compelled to give to one so grossly wronged.