Agatha Webb (24 page)

Sweetwater hesitated. There was something in the errand or in the
manner of the man and woman that he did not like.

"Don't potter!" spoke up the latter, with an impatient look at her
watch. "Mr. Gifford will expect those papers."

Sweetwater's sensitive fingers closed on the package he held. It
did not feel like papers.

"Are you going?" asked the man.

Sweetwater looked up with a smile. "Large pay for so slight a
commission," he ventured, turning the packet over and over in his
hand.

"But then you will execute it at once, and according to the
instructions I have given you," retorted the man. "It is your
trustworthiness I pay for. Now go."

Sweetwater turned to go. After all it was probably all right, and
five dollars easily earned is doubly five dollars. As he reached
the staircase he stumbled. The shoes he wore did not fit him.

"Be careful, there!" shouted the woman, in a shrill, almost
frightened voice, while the man stumbled back into the room in a
haste which seemed wholly uncalled for. "If you let the packet
fall you will do injury to its contents. Go softly, man, go
softly!"

Yet they had said it held papers!

Troubled, yet hardly knowing what his duty was, Sweetwater
hastened down the stairs, and took his way up the street. The town
hall should be easy to find; indeed, he thought he saw it in the
distance. As he went, he asked himself two questions: Could he
fail to deliver the package according to instructions, and yet
earn his money? And was there any way of so delivering it without
risk to the recipient or dereliction of duty to the man who had
intrusted it to him and whose money he wished to earn? To the
first question his conscience at once answered no; to the second
the reply came more slowly, and before fixing his mind
determinedly upon it he asked himself why he felt that this was no
ordinary commission. He could answer readily enough. First, the
pay was too large, arguing that either the packet or the placing
of the packet in a certain position on Mr. Gifford's table was of
uncommon importance to this man or this woman. Secondly, the
woman, though plainly and inconspicuously clad, had the face of a
more than ordinarily unscrupulous adventuress, while her companion
was one of those saturnine-faced men we sometimes meet, whose
first look puts us on our guard and whom, if we hope nothing from
him, we instinctively shun. Third, they did not look like
inhabitants of the house and rooms in which he found them. Nothing
beyond the necessary articles of furniture was to be seen there;
not a trunk, not an article of clothing, nor any of the little
things that mark a woman's presence in a spot where she expects to
spend a day or even an hour. Consequently they were transients and
perhaps already in the act of flight. Then he was being followed.
Of this he felt sure. He had followed people himself, and
something in his own sensations assured him that his movements
were under surveillance. It would, therefore, not do to show any
consciousness of this, and he went on directly and as straight to
his goal as his rather limited knowledge of the streets would
allow. He was determined to earn this money and to earn it without
disadvantage to anyone. And he thought he saw his way.

At the entrance of the town hall he hesitated an instant. An
officer was standing in the doorway, it would be easy to call his
attention to the packet he held and ask him to keep his eye on it.
But this might involve him with the police, and this was
something, as we know, which he was more than anxious to avoid. He
reverted to his first idea.

Mixing with the crowd just now hurrying to and fro through the
long corridors, he reached the room designated and found it, as he
had been warned he should, empty.

Approaching the table, he laid down the packet just as he had been
directed, in front of the big arm chair, and then, casting a
hurried look towards the door and failing to find anyone watching
him, he took up a pencil lying near-by and scrawled hastily across
the top of the packet the word "Suspicious." This he calculated
would act as a warning to Mr. Gifford in case there was anything
wrong about the package, and pass as a joke with him, and even the
sender, if there was not. And satisfied that he had both earned
his money and done justice to his own apprehensions, he turned to
retrace his steps. As before, the corridors were alive with
hurrying men of various ages and appearance, but only two
attracted his notice. One of these was a large, intellectual-
looking man, who turned into the room from which he had just
emerged, and the other a short, fair man, with a countenance he
had known from boyhood. Mr. Stone of Sutherlandtown was within ten
paces of him, and he was as well known to the good postmaster as
the postmaster was to him. Could anyone have foreseen such a
chance!

Turning his back with a slow slouch, he made for a rear door he
saw swinging in and out before him. As he passed through he cast a
quick look behind him. He had not been recognised. In great relief
he rushed on, knocking against a man standing against one of the
outside pillars.

"Halloo!" shouted this man.

Sweetwater stopped. There was a tone of authority in the voice
which he could not resist.

"What are you trying to do? Why do you fall over a man like that?
Are you drunk?"

Sweetwater drew himself up, made a sheepish bow, and muttered
pantingly:

"Excuse me, sir. I'm in a hurry; I'm a messenger."

The man who was not in a hurry seemed disposed to keep him for a
moment. He had caught sight of Sweetwater's eye, which was his one
remarkable feature, and he had also been impressed by that word
messenger, for he repeated it with some emphasis.

"A messenger, eh? Are you going on a message now?"

Sweetwater, who was anxious to get away from the vicinity of Mr.
Stone, shrugged his shoulders in careless denial, and was pushing
on when the gentleman again detained him.

"Do you know," said he, "that I like your looks? You are not a
beauty, but you look like a fellow who, if he promised to do a
thing, would do it and do it mighty well too."

Sweetwater could not restrain a certain movement of pride. He was
honest, and he knew it, but the fact had not always been so openly
recognised.

"I have just earned five dollars by doing a commission for a man,"
said he, with a straightforward look. "See, sir. It was honestly
earned."

The man, who was young and had a rather dashing but inscrutable
physiognomy, glanced at the coin Sweetwater showed him and
betrayed a certain disappointment.

"So you're flush," said he. "Don't want another job?"

"Oh, as to that," said Sweetwater, edging slowly down the street,
"I'm always ready for business. Five dollars won't last forever,
and, besides, I'm in need of new togs."

"Well, rather," retorted the other, carelessly following him. "Do
you mind going up to Boston?"

Boston! Another jump toward home.

"No," said Sweetwater, hesitatingly, "not if it's made worth my
while. Do you want your message delivered to-day?"

"At once. That is, this evening. It's a task involving patience
and more or less shrewd judgment. Have you these qualities, my
friend? One would not judge it from your clothes."

"My clothes!" laughed Sweetwater. Life was growing very
interesting all at once. "I know it takes patience to WEAR them,
and as for any lack of judgment I may show in their choice, I
should just like to say I did not choose them myself, sir; they
fell to me promiscuous-like as a sort of legacy from friends.
You'll see what I'll do in that way if you give me the chance to
earn an extra ten."

"Ah, it's ten dollars you want. Well, come in here and have a
drink and then we'll see."

They were before a saloon house of less than humble pretensions,
and as he followed the young gentleman in it struck him that it
was himself rather than his well-dressed and airy companion who
would be expected to drink here. But he made no remark, though he
intended to surprise the man by his temperance.

"Now, look here," said the young gentleman, suddenly seating
himself at a dingy table in a very dark corner and motioning
Sweetwater to do the same; "I've been looking for a man all day to
go up to Boston for me, and I think you'll do. You know Boston?"

Sweetwater had great command over himself, but he flushed slightly
at this question, though it was so dark where he sat with this man
that it made very little difference.

"I have been there," said he.

"Very well, then, you will go again to-night. You will arrive
there about seven, you will go the rounds of some half-dozen
places whose names I will give you, and when you come across a
certain gentleman whom I will describe to you, you will give him—
"

"Not a package?" Sweetwater broke out with a certain sort of dread
of a repetition of his late experience.

"No, this slip on which two words are written. He will want one
more word, but before you give it to him you must ask for your ten
dollars. You'll get them," he answered in response to a glance of
suspicion from Sweetwater. Sweetwater was convinced that he had
got hold of another suspicious job. It made him a little serious.
"Do I look like a go-between for crooks?" he asked himself. "I'm
afraid I'm not so much of a success as I thought myself." But he
said to the man before him: "Ten dollars is small pay for such
business. Twenty-five would be nearer the mark."

"Very well, he will give you twenty-five dollars. I forgot that
ten dollars was but little in advance of your expenses."

"Twenty-five if I find him, and he is in funds. What if I don't?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Except your ticket; that I'll give you."

Sweetwater did not know what to say. Like the preceding job it
might be innocent and it might not. And then, he did not like
going to Boston, where he was liable to meet more than one who
knew him.

"There is no harm in the business," observed the other,
carelessly, pushing a glass of whiskey which had just been served
him toward Sweetwater. "I would even be willing to do it myself,
if I could leave New Bedford to-night, but I can't. Come! It's as
easy as crooking your elbow."

"Just now you said it wasn't," growled Sweetwater, drinking from
his glass. "But no matter about that, go ahead, I'll do it. Shall
I have to buy other clothes?"

"I'd buy a new pair of trousers," suggested the other. "The rest
you can get in Boston. You don't want to be too much in evidence,
you know."

Sweetwater agreed with. him. To attract attention was what he most
dreaded. "When does the train start?" he asked.

The young man told him.

"Well, that will give me time to buy what I want. Now, what are
your instructions?"

The young man gave him a memorandum, containing four addresses.
"You will find him at one of these places," said he. "And now to
know your man when you see him. He is a large, handsome fellow,
with red hair and a moustache like the devil. He has been hurt,
and wears his left hand in a sling, but he can play cards, and
will be found playing cards, and in very good company too. You
will have to use your discretion in approaching him. When once he
sees this bit of paper, all will be easy. He knows what these two
words mean well enough, and the third one, the one that is worth
twenty-five dollars to you, is FREDERICK."

Sweetwater, who had drunk half his glass, started so at this word,
which was always humming in his brain, that he knocked over his
tumbler and spilled what was left in it.

"I hope I won't forget that word," he remarked, in a careless
tone, intended to carry off his momentary show of feeling.

"If you do, then don't expect the twenty-five dollars," retorted
the other, finishing his own glass, but not offering to renew
Sweetwater's.

Sweetwater laughed, said he thought he could trust his memory, and
rose. In a half-hour he was at the depot, and in another fifteen
minutes speeding out of New Bedford on his way to Boston.

He had had but one anxiety—that Mr. Stone might be going up to
Boston too. But, once relieved of this apprehension, he settled
back, and for the first time in twelve hours had a minute in which
to ask himself who he was, and what he was about. Adventure had
followed so fast upon adventure that he was in a more or less
dazed condition, and felt as little capable of connecting event
with event as if he had been asked to recall the changing pictures
of a kaleidoscope. That affair of the packet, now, was it or was
it not serious, and would he ever know what it meant or how it
turned out?

Like a child who had been given a pebble, and told to throw it
over the wall, he had thrown and run, giving a shout of warning,
it is true, but not knowing, nor ever likely to know, where the
stone had fallen, or what it was meant to do. Then this new
commission on which he was bent—was it in any way connected with
the other, or merely the odd result of his being in the right
place at the right moment? He was inclined to think the latter.
And yet how odd it was that one doubtful errand should be followed
by another, in a town no larger than New Bedford, forcing him from
scene to scene, till he found himself speeding toward the city he
least desired to enter, and from which he had the most to fear!

But brooding over a case like this brings small comfort. He felt
that he had been juggled with, but he neither knew by whose hand
nor in what cause. If the hand was that of Providence, why he had
only to go on following the beck of the moment, while if it was
that of Fate, the very uselessness of struggling with it was
apparent at once. Poor reasoning, perhaps, but no other offered,
and satisfied that whatever came his intentions were above
question, he settled himself at last for a nap, of which he
certainly stood in good need. When he awoke he was in Boston.