CHAPTER II
THE ROBBERY
About three months previous to the events related in the preceding chapter, on a dark and stormy night, two men might have been seen prowling around a stately mansion in an aristocratic portion of the city of New York. After carefully reconnoitering the premises, to see that no one was stirring within, one of them cautiously proceeded to cut out a pane of glass in one of the basement windows, while the other kept watch upon the sidewalk.
The glass was removed without the slightest noise, whereupon the burglar unfastened the window and lifted the sash. Then making a little noise like the twittering of a sparrow, he was immediately joined by his companion, and both disappeared within the house.
A few minutes later a third man coming along the street, saw the sudden glimmer of a light in one of the lower rooms of the mansion.
Something about it instantly attracted his attention.
It was a quick, sharp flare, and then seemed to go suddenly out.
He waited a minute or two, and the same thing was repeated.
“Aha! a burglar!” he muttered to himself. “I think I’ll have to look into this thing.”
He stopped, and his first impulse was to turn and go in search of a policeman.
Ah! if he had done so how much of future misery would have been saved him.
It seemed a long time that he stood waiting there, and he regretted that he had not gone for an officer.
He did not know how long the burglars had been there, and he had feared they would escape before he could return. But finally, he heard cautious steps approaching from the rear toward the corner where he was stationed, and now he caught the sound of exultant whispers, that they had been so successful as to get out undiscovered with their rich booty.
The next instant two men emerged into view, bearing their plunder in a bag between them.
With a bound, the newcomer darted forward and felled one man to the ground with a blow that sounded like the descent of a sledgehammer, and then grappled with the other.
The burglar who had been felled had been only momentarily stunned, and, almost instantly recovering himself, he had quietly picked up the bag, which had also fallen to the ground in the melee, and made off with it, leaving his companion to shift for himself as best he could.
The combatants fought bravely and well, but the assailant being lighter than the burglar, and less experienced in pugilistic practice, gradually lost ground, and finally, a well-directed blow from his antagonist laid him flat at his feet, when he, also, beat a hasty retreat, having first dropped something on the ground beside his victim.
Steps were now heard approaching upon the pavement; the noise of the scuffle had reached the ears of one of the protectors of the peace, and he was hastening to the rescue.
A light at the same time appeared at a window in one of the lower rooms of the mansion so lately robbed, while above a sash was thrown hastily up, and a slight, white-robed figure leaned forth into the night.
The light in the window below streamed directly out upon the fallen hero—alas! a hero no longer—who now began to gather himself and his scattered senses together once more. As he arose to his feet a cry from above rang out on the stillness of the night.
“Oh, Earle! Earle! how came you here, and what is the matter?”
The voice was that of Editha Dalton, and, springing forward under the window, the young man replied, reassuringly:
“Do not be alarmed, Miss Editha. I have had a fall, but am all right now. I’ll come and tell you tomorrow how I happened to be here tonight.”
“So, so, my fine young gentleman, you’ll come and tell the lady tomorrow, will you? I’m thinking mayhaps you will have a chance to tell someone else by that time, you disturber of the peace;” and, before Earle Wayne could scarcely realize what had happened, a pair of steel bracelets were slipped about his wrists, and he was a prisoner.
“You have made a mistake, sir,” he said civilly, to his captor, yet beginning to feel very uncomfortable in the position wherein he found himself. “I was trying to stop a couple of thieves who had just robbed this house when one of them knocked me down and cleared.”
“Yes, yes; I find I always get hold of the wrong rogue—someone else does the deed and the one I catch is always so ‘innocent,’” laughed the policeman, with good-natured sarcasm. “Aha! what have we here?” he cried again, as his foot came in contact with some glittering object and sent it spinning on before him.
He stooped to pick it up, and, as the light fell upon it, he saw it was a costly bracelet, set with a solitaire diamond surrounded with emeralds.
“That looks ‘innocent,’ don’t it now?” he said, holding it up to the light with a chuckle.
“That is Miss Dalton’s bracelet; I’ve seen her wear it,” the young man thoughtlessly and injudiciously admitted.
“Oh, yes, no doubt; and you thought mayhaps that them glittering stones might bring a pretty little sum. I came just in time to stop this little game. Come, I think I can accommodate you with lodgings tonight, my hearty.”
At this moment a man came out of the house upon the balcony in great excitement.
“Help! help!” he cried. “I’ve been robbed! Stop thief! stop—”
“Ay, I have stopped him, and just in the nick of time, sir,” responded the policeman, leading Earle into view.
“Earle Wayne!” exclaimed Mr. Dalton, in greatest astonishment, as his glance fell upon him.
“Yes, sir, it is I; but I am no thief, as you very well know.”
“No, this does not look like it!” interrupted the policeman, flourishing the bracelet conspicuously.
“I have committed no robbery,” asserted Earle, with quiet dignity; “and I did not see that bracelet until you picked it up and showed it to me. It must have been dropped by one of the robbers, who fled after I was knocked down;” and he went on to explain how he happened to be there, and what he had seen and heard.
“It’s a likely story now, isn’t it, sir,” sneered his captor, who was all too eager for the eclat of having captured the perpetrator of so daring a theft, “when I’ve found him with his booty right here on the spot?”
“Mr. Dalton,” Earle appealed, fearing he had got himself into a bad predicament, “you know well enough that I would do no such a thing, particularly in this house of all others;” and he glanced in a troubled way up at that white-robed figure in the window.
“No, certainly not. Papa, we know Earle would not be guilty of anything of the kind, and I believe every word he has said about the encounter with those men,” Miss Dalton asserted, confidently.
“Did you see or hear anyone else, Editha?” asked her father.
“No; I heard a heavy fall, and after listening a minute I came to the window, where I saw Earle just getting up from the ground; and see! as the light shines upon him he looks as if he had been having an encounter with someone;” and she pointed at the young man’s disarranged and soiled clothing.
But Mr. Dalton shook his head, while the policeman sneered. It looked bad, and the presence of the bracelet seemed to them indisputable proof that he was in some way criminally connected with the affair.
Further investigation proved that a quantity of silver, and all of Mrs. Dalton’s diamonds, together with quite a large sum of money, had been stolen.
Young Wayne was closely questioned as to who his accomplices were, for the policeman insisted that he must have had one or more.
“Make a clean breast of it, young one, and being your first attempt, perhaps they will let you off easy,” he said.
But Earle indignantly refused to answer any more questions, and was at last led away to the station-house and locked up until his case could be officially investigated.
The morning papers were full of the robbery, and the young man’s name figured largely in their columns, while much was said about the “culpable hardihood and stubbornness of one so young in years, but apparently so old in crime.”
A day or two after the case was investigated, and, no further light being gained upon the affair, he was committed for trial.
Richard Forrester, a lawyer of note and a brother of Mrs. Dalton, in whose employ the young man had been for the past three years, immediately gave bonds for him to the amount of ten thousand dollars, and for the next three months devoted himself assiduously to working up the complicated case.
The day for Earle Wayne’s trial came, and only the following facts came to light:
His character, up to the night in question, as far as anyone knew, was unimpeachable.
He had been in Mr. Forrester’s employ for three years, and during that time had gained that gentleman’s entire confidence and kind regard, and he had even contemplated making him a partner in his business as soon as he had completed his course of study and been admitted to the bar.
He spoke at some length, and in glowing terms, of his honesty and industry, and said he had deemed him if anything, too rigid and morbidly conscientious upon what seemed to him points of minor importance.
All this spoke well for the prisoner, but it did not touch upon the matter under consideration, and could not therefore be accepted as evidence.
It seems that on the afternoon before the robbery Earle had asked permission to go out of town on business for himself. He had not stated what that business was, neither had Mr. Forrester inquired.
Now, however, the question came up, but Earle refused to state it, and this of itself turned the tide strong against him.
He had obtained leave to leave the city on a train that left at two in the afternoon and had gone to the village of —, only eighteen miles out.
He transacted his business, which concerned only his private interests, he said, and this much he could also say, “was connected with the events of his early life,” and returned to the city by the late train, which arrived about midnight.
On his way from the station to his lodgings, he was obliged to pass Mr. Dalton’s house, where he saw, as already described, the light within one of the lower rooms.
He stated that his first impulse was to go for a police officer, but fearing the man—he had not thought there would be more than one—would be off with his booty before he could return, he resolved to remain, encounter the villain single-handed, and bring him to justice.
He then went on to describe his tussle with the two ruffians.
But he had only his own word with which to battle all the evidence against him. His story did not sound reasonable, the jury thought, particularly as he so persistently refused to state the nature of his business to the village of —; and besides, the fact of the bracelet having been found in his possession, or what amounted to the same thing, was almost sufficient of itself to convict him.
“Earle, if you could only tell this business of yours, perhaps we might be able to do something for you; otherwise I see no chance,” Mr. Forrester had urged when the opposing counsel had made such a point of his refusal to do so.
“I cannot, sir. It is connected with a great wrong committed years ago and involves the name of my mother. I cannot unveil the past before the curious rabble gathered here—no, not even if I have to serve out a ten-year sentence for keeping silent,” Earle said, firmly, but with deep emotion.
Editha’s evidence—since she was the first to see and recognize him on the night of the robbery—went further than almost anything else toward condemning him, even though it was given with such reluctance, together with her oft-asserted belief that he was innocent.
The tender-hearted, loyal girl would rather have had her tongue paralyzed than to have been obliged to speak the words which so told against him.
Earle was cross-examined and recross-questioned, but he told the same story every time, never swerving in a single particular from his first statements.
Every possible way was tried to make him confess who his accomplices were, the opposing counsel maintaining that he must have had one or more. But he always replied:
“I had no accomplice, for I have neither planned nor executed any robbery.”
“But you assert that two men came out of the house.”
“I encountered two men at the corner of Mr. Dalton’s house; one I surprised and felled to the ground, and then grappled with the other. During the scuffle, the first one got up and ran off with the bag which contained their booty. I then received a blow that stunned and felled me, and when I came to myself again both were gone. I know nothing of either them or their plunder, and I am innocent of any complicity in the matter.”
But all was of no avail against the positive evidence which opposed him, and the fatal verdict was spoken, the fearful sentence pronounced.
Popular sympathy inclined strongly toward the unfortunate young man, whom many knew and respected for his hitherto stainless character, while his appearance, so noble and manly, prepossessed almost everyone in his favor.
As before stated, he had come to Richard Forrester when a youth of seventeen, asking for work, and the great lawyer had employed him as an office boy, and it was not long before he came to feel a deep interest in the intelligent lad. He saw that he had what lawyers term “a long head,” and could grasp all the details of a case almost as readily as he himself could, and he resolved that he would educate him for the profession.
Mr. Forrester was a bachelor of great wealth, and exceedingly fond of his beautiful and vivacious niece, Editha Dalton, who, report said, was to be his heiress.
She was a slight, sprightly girl of fourteen when Earle Wayne came into her uncle’s employ, and a mutual admiration sprang up between them at once, and steadily increased, until, on the part of the young man, it grew into a deep and abiding love, although he had never presumed to betray it by so much as a look or tone.
Editha, at seventeen, had not as yet analyzed her own feelings toward her uncle’s protege; and thus we find her at the time of the trial pouring out her impulsive regrets and grief in the most unreserved manner, while her tender heart was filled with keenest anguish at the fate of her beau ideal of all manly excellence.
As for Mr. Dalton, he did not share the faith of either his daughter or his brother-in-law; and, notwithstanding he was vastly astonished upon discovering Earle Wayne in the hands of a policeman at his own door on the night of the robbery, yet he was a man who could easily believe almost anything of one whom he disliked.
He did dislike Earle, simply because Editha showed him so much favor; and he was rather glad than otherwise now, if the truth were known, that this very fascinating young hero was to be removed from his path, even though he was to become a prisoner. He began to fear that she had already grown to admire him more than was either wise or proper, considering the vast difference in their relative social positions; and it would never do for the aristocratic Miss Dalton, heiress-expectant, to fall in love with an office boy.
And so Earle Wayne went to prison.
But he went with a stout heart and a manly courage that very few possess who are doomed to drag out a weary term of years behind bolts, bars, and solid walls.
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