CHAPTER VI.
A CRIMINAL HUNT
Now, I had told the officer in command my belief and suspicions concerning the counterfeit business which I believed was going on about us, and had been told that two of the counterfeit bills had already been brought to his notice and captured within the week; and Dave had insisted upon his hearing the story of my absurd arrest by the guards, and now it only needed a look from me, and the sight of Dave's convulsed face, to make the situation plain to him. He stepped forward, but before he could speak a new thought had darted into Dame Camp's active mind.
'La!' she finished, 'I s'pose, come to think, he's been brought here now to be tried, ain't he?'
With the shadow of a smile upon his face, the officer turned toward the farmer.
'What is your complaint?' he asked courteously; and he shot me a glance which I knew meant, 'Let him tell his own story.' And now, being authorized to speak, Farmer Camp began to tell, in his own homely way, the story of the 'greenback swindle,' as he termed it. When he had reached the point in the narrative where I made my unlucky attempt to rout the swindlers, he turned toward me.
'I've had an idee sence, though my wife didn't agree with me much' – here came an audible sniff from Mrs. Camp – 'that this here young man might 'a' meant well, after all, and we wus a little mite hasty; but, ye see, he'd been a-lookin' at us so long, an' my wife'd been a-noticin' it, havin' her mind kind o' sot like on confidence people and sech, that she felt kind o' oneasy at his sharp looks – they wus so keen, she said, an' so quick to look away, she got nervous, and said she felt as if he wus a-lookin' right inter my pockets.'
'There now, Camp, you needn't be a-excusin' me! I stick ter my idee. Anyone can see that the young feller ain't innocent, else somebody'd 'a' spoke fur him, fust off – '
Here Dave exploded audibly, and the officer checked her with a motion of his hand.
'Let me settle this point at once by telling you, madam, that the gentleman you have accused is an officer high in his profession, and sent here to protect the public and look after criminals. He had but just arrived, and it was because of this that he was without his officer's badge, which would at once have put those men to rout had it been worn and displayed to them. Let me tell you now, to prevent further mistakes, that the detectives upon whom we rely in greatest emergencies are always to be found in citizen's clothes, and they are not likely to display a badge, except when necessary.'
Long before the end of this speech consternation was written all over the face of Adam Camp, but his wife was made of sterner stuff, and when her better half had stuttered and floundered half through a sufficiently humble apology, directed, of course, toward myself, she broke in upon his effort, no whit abashed:
'There, Camp, it's easy enough ter see how we came ter make sech a mistake, and I'm sure the young man will bear no malice to'ard a couple of folks old enough ter be his parients. 'Twas them sharp-lookin' eyes that set me ter noticin' ye, when you was lookin' over Camp fust off, down to the Administration Building, and when you went an' sot down on the settee by him, an' then got up an' followed us so fur, what was I to think? You was a-watchin' us sure enough, only you meant well by it. But, land sakes! in sech a place, where everybody is tryin' to look out fur number one, I did what looked my dooty. I'm willin' to ask yer pardon, though, and I ain't goin' ter bear no malice.'
Overwhelmed by this magnanimity, I murmured my thanks and complete satisfaction with her amende honorable, and tried to turn the occasion to such profit as might be by questioning the man a little.
'You were saying that you changed a bill, or were about to do so. Did the man make any difficulty after I left you?'
'No, sir. He seemed in a kind of a hurry, and made out to be onsartin whether he could spare so much small money, as he called it. But finally he counted out a roll of bills, and had me count them after him.'
'There – in the crowd where you stood?'
'Wal, no. He took us to one side a little – right in behind the place where the little man was a-sellin' canes – sort of up ag'inst a partition, and there we made the dicker.'
'And he left you right away?' queried the officer in charge.
'Yes – jest about as quick as he could.'
'And the other,' I asked, 'the man who took you to this agent – the man with the large Sabbath-school class?'
'Oh! he asked us to go to the terminus station with him and see his young men; but my wife wanted to see things, and we jest went as fur as the door, out of perliteness.'
'And when did you discover that you had been swindled?'
'Wal, M'riar wanted to ride in one of them coopy things with a man-hoss behind and before; and when she got ready to get out, which was purty soon, I give one of them fellers a two-dollar soovyneer bill, but they made a great jabbering about it, and M'riar says, says she, "I guess they ain't got the change;" so I fished out some pennies, and a dime and two postage stamps, and after a bit they tuk 'em and waddled off. Then we got to lookin' up and down, and we didn't have no more 'casion to use money – M'riar was so busy seein' the folks and their clo's – till we got hungry, and then come the rumpus. When I come to pay the bill, they was a reg'lar howl, an' we come mighty near bein' marched off to the calaboose, same's you was. They said the bill I offered 'em first off, an' all the rest, was counterfeit.'
Until now Brainerd had taken no part in the dialogue; but now, with a quick glance in my direction, he asked;
'Will you describe the man who gave you the money – the supposed agent?'
Camp pondered. 'Wal,' he began, 'he was tall, 's much as six foot, I should say, an' his eyes were black an' big. His hair was consid'able long, and he had a good deal of it on his face in a big bushy moustache. He had a slim nose – and he wore a big di'mond on his little finger.'
'Did you notice his hands?'
'M – no.'
'Wal, I did!' interposed his wife. 'I seen the di'mond, ef 'twas a di'mond. His hands was white – real white, 'long side of his face, and they looked like reg'lar claws; sech long fingers and pointed nails.'
'Ah!' Dave shot me a glance full of meaning. 'Now, Mrs. Camp, you seem a very observing woman. Will you describe the other man – the gentleman with the Sabbath-school class?'
The woman's head became even more erect, and her look more firm and confident than before. 'Yes,' she said at once; 'I can.' She cast her eyes about her, and, seeing a vacant chair near her interlocutor – the one lately vacated by myself – she seated herself deliberately, and began:
'He wasn't much to look at; about as big as you, mebbe, and about the same complected as that gentleman,' pointing to the sergeant at the desk, 'only his nose was longer, and sort of big and nobby at the end, an' a leetle red. I remember he had bigger ears than common, too; they sort of set straight out. His eyes were little, and a sort of watery gray, and his hair was kind of thin and sandy-like. He had some little mutton-chop whiskers, and a little hair, a'most tan-colour, on his upper lip. His mouth was quite big, and I noticed he had two front teeth with gold fillin' into 'em. He had gloves on his hands when we see him first, but when we met him afterward they was off.'
'Afterward, you say – did you meet him after you had discovered that you had been swindled?' I broke in.
'Yes – we – '
'You see,' broke in Adam Camp, 'it was this way: we was comin' out of Midway, for we'd been out a'most to the end a-seein' the sights, an' when we got hungry we went into a place a blue-coat said was good, the Vienny Caffy, he called it. Well, it was there we had the fuss about the money, and they told us to come here right away and make a complaint. We started, and was jest comin' past that menagerie place, when M'riar wanted to stop jest afore the place and look at the big lion over the door.'
'A live one,' interpolated M'riar.
'Yes,