A Woman at Bay; Or, A Fiend in Skirts

were getting yellow and red, although there had been no frost; but oak leaves turn earlier than others. When he descended at Calamont Station, he stood there on the platform until the train had pulled out, and the other passengers who had arrived by it had departed their several ways. Then he approached the baggageman. "Me want find ze man named Beel Turner," he said slowly. "What's that?" asked the baggageman. "Me want find Beel Turner." "Oh! Bill Turner, is it? Well, go up that street there until you come to the post office. You'll like enough see an old, white-whiskered chap standing there, chewing tobacco. That'll be Bill Turner." "Beel Turner? He ees known here? No?" "Known here? Gee! He has lived here since the oldest inhabitant was a baby. He has always lived here. He is about a thousand years old, my man; but as strong and as lively as a kid yet. You'll find him somewhere around the post office." Nick thanked him in his broken English and strode up the street. Sure enough, when he arrived in the vicinity of the post office, he saw a white-whiskered man standing there, and he approached him at once. "You ees Beel Turner?" he asked modestly, sidling up to the man. "I be," was the response, while Bill Turner fixed his clear gray eyes upon the detective. "What might you be wantin' of me, stranger?" "I have--hush!--I have some money for you, Beel Turner. Can you take me where we can talk so that nobody will overhear us?" Turner eyed him suspiciously for a moment; then he turned abruptly away with the remark: "Come along with me, stranger." Nick walked beside him through the town to the very end of the main street. Then they turned into a roadway, which led up a steep hill for some distance, and which presently brought them to a modest cottage that was almost hidden under the brow of the hill. "Here is where I live," said Turner. "I live here all alone, 'cept a cat and two dogs. But the dogs hev got old like me, now, and they can't go out among the hills as they used to; although, bless you, I reckon I kin walk jest as fur as ever I could, if I try. Come in." Nick followed him inside, and Turner offered him a rocker near the open window. The whole house was as neat and clean as if it had the care of a woman. "Now, mister," said Turner, "what hev ye got on yer mind?" "In the first place," replied Nick, in his natural voice, "I am not what I seem to be. I am not a lumberman, or a Frenchman--or a Canadian. I am a detective." "Sho! You don't say so. Well, that beats me. Sure, ye do it fine, mister. I would never hev suspected at all that you are not what you seem. But go on." "I have come here after that gang of hoboes who infest the neighborhood for fifty or sixty miles around this place. I am principally after the woman who is their chief. Do you know who I mean?" "I reckon ye must be referrin' to that there Black Madge and her gang." "That's right." "Well, yer up agin' a proposition. That's all I kin say about it." "I know that; and what I want of you is to get you to help me with that proposition, Bill Turner." "Ain't I too old?" "Not a bit of it." "Is there good pay in it?" "The very best; and there is fifty dollars down for you right now--if you are inclined to do as I want you to do." Nick took a roll of bills from his pocket as he spoke, and laid it on the table before the avaricious glances of the old man. "Well, sir," said Turner slowly, "all I've got to say is this: If I can do what you want done, I'll do it. I want that money as bad as anybody could want it and not grab it right now where it is lying; but I have never had a penny in my life that I didn't get honestly, and I am afraid that I'm too old to do what you want done." "I tell you that you are not." "Then, in that case, I'll take the money and put it in my pocket--so. There! Now, go ahead. If the work is honest, and such as an honest man can do, I'll do it--if I ain't too old, and you say I ain't. But if the work ain't honest, I'll return your money. Now, what is it, mister?" "I want you first to promise that you will not reveal my identity. I must be Jules Verbeau to you to the end, and you must forget that I am not he in fact." "You kin consider that done, sir." "Second, I want you to answer some questions for me." "Fire away." "How well do you know the hills and mountains, the ravines and gulches, the rocks and the caves around this region?" "As well as I know that dooryard in front of you," replied the old man, pointing through the window. "I know every inch of the country--every inch of it." "Now, another question which you will not understand at once: Do you know how to use a pencil, and is your hand steady enough to draw plans for me?" "Yes, sir. I began life as a draughtsman; but that was when I was a boy." "That will suffice. Now--could you draw a plan of different parts of the mountains, so it would be plain enough for me to follow without your being present with me?" "That would depend upon you, sir. If you are a man who has some woodcraft in your make-up, I say yes. It would depend upon you." "We will consider that question answered, then. Now, have you any idea to what part of the mountainous region around here--say, within fifty miles of where we are seated--the hobo gang would select in which to hide themselves?" "I think I could guess it to a dot." "Why?" "Because there is one region up among those hills which is exactly fitted for them; and from which you couldn't drive them out with a thousand men. That's why!" "Good. That sounds as if it might be the place they would select. How far is it from here, as you would travel afoot." "A matter of thirty miles." "Now, can you draw me a plan of that region?" "I kin." "And how to get there?" "I kin." "And are there caverns there? Do you suppose those people are hiding and making their headquarters in caves?" "Yes, to both questions. The hills round that 'ere region are honeycombed with caves. Some of 'em is big, and some of 'em is little; but there's a lot of 'em there." "Good; and you know them well enough to give me a working plan of them? What a sailor would call a chart?" "You bet I do." "Now, another subject: Have you ever traveled away from here? Have you ever been to New York, for instance?" "Never in my life. I've always lived right around here. I don't suppose I have been ten miles away from here, except in the woods, in forty years. But in the woods I sometimes used to go a good ways." "I've no doubt of that. How would you like to make a visit to New York?" "I should like it very much--only it would cost such a lot, you know." "Suppose your expenses were paid?" "Well, that would be different." "How much, in cash, will you take for your whiskers, Mr. Turner?" "Now what the devil do you mean by that? Are you making fun of me?" "Not at all. I was wondering if fifty dollars more, down, would induce you to shave off your whiskers." "Humph! Jest tell me what you are getting at and I'll answer you." "This: I want to disguise myself so that I look like you. I want to go out in the mountains as you would go out. While I am making believe that I am Bill Turner, I want you to take a trip to New York, and to live there, at my house, and take it easy, see all the sights, go to the theatres and the museums, and all that, until I return, and I want you to shave off your whiskers, and let me blacken your brows and otherwise make some changes in your appearance, so that if any of the people from Calamont should happen to meet you in the street down there they wouldn't say, 'Why, there is Bill Turner!' Would you consent to do that?" "For another fifty dollars down?" "Yes." "I would. When do you want me to shave?" "I will tell you in good time. First, I want you to fix up those plans." "Hadn't I better git about it right now?" "Yes. I think you had. And I will remain here with you while you do it in order that you may explain things to me as you work upon them." "That's a good idee, too. I can make you know them mountings as well as I do, in a short time. I knows 'em so well----" "That reminds me. Do you happen to know by sight, or have an acquaintance with, any of the members of that gang?" The old man shifted uneasily in his chair, and at last he replied: "I know one of them--purty well. He calls himself Handsome." "Good! What does Handsome know about you, Bill?" "He don't know nothin' about me, 'cept that I'm a woodsman, and that I'm too old to do him any harm. I helped him once, and once he helped me a leetle, and we're sort of friends. But I ain't never seen him but twice in my life, and then both times I met him in the woods, so I ain't never mentioned nothin' about him to other folks." "That's splendid! It is just what I hoped. It couldn't be better! I want you now to tell me what you talked about when you and Handsome met each other those two times in the woods." "That's easy. The first time, I was walking through the woods, up about where you are going--that is, it was in that region--when I heard somebody hollerin' fur help. At first I couldn't tell for the life of me where the hollerin' come from; but after a leetle I located it up on the side of one of them steep hills, and so I crawled up there. Well, when I got there, I found that a man had slid into a hole in the rocks, and that he couldn't git out nohow. If I hadn't happened along the chances are that he'd starved before he'd ha' been helped out." "And as it was--what?" "I helped him out. I didn't have no hatchet, but I had a good huntin' knife along with me, and I managed to whittle down a good-sized spruce, which I trimmed so's to make a sort of ladder of it. When that was done I lowered the butt end of it into the hole, and Handsome--that was who it was in the bottom of the hole--he climbed up so's I could get hold of him, and then I pulled him out. There wasn't much to that, was there?" "It saved his life." "Probably." "Wasn't he grateful?" "Suttingly." "What did you talk about after that?" "We sot down there a spell and chinned, that's all. He axed me who I was, and I told him. He axed me if I was long in these parts, and I told him allers. He axed me where I lived, and I told him about this cottage. That's all--only he said he was a hobo, and that he was called Handsome. I allowed that the people who called him that lied mightily; but I didn't say so jest then." "What more was talked about?" "Nothin'." "When was the next time you saw him?" "That was in the middle of the summer, and it was farther south--not far from the railroad tracks." "Well, what happened then?" "That was the time he helped me." "How was that?" "I can't never tell you exactly how it was, but somehow I had got my foot wedged in the root of a tree, and I had been tryin' an hour to git it out, without success. The tree was hard, and I was just tacklin' that root with my knife--I'd have cut through it in about an hour, I reckon--when 'long comes that feller Handsome that I had saved from the hole in the rocks. He had an axe on his shoulder, and when he spied me he stopped, and laughed, and laughed until I got mad. "'Caught in yer own trap, ain't ye?' he axed me. "'I be,' says I. 'You've got a axe, and mebby you kin help me out o' it.' "Well, he did. He chopped the root in a jiffy, and I was free; but, bless you, I could 'a' done it myself with my knife in a hour, anyhow. All the same, I was grateful to him, and we sot down on a log and chinned for a while." "What about?" "He asked me what I was doing around there, and I told him that I was