He looked into my eyes and then thrust out his hand.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll
not ask any questions. I guess there are some
curious stories hidden in these old houses.”
Peter hobbled to the front door with him. He
had not gone so far as the parlor once while Mr. Ladley
was in the house.
* * * *
*
They had had a sale of spring flowers at the store
that day, and Mr. Reynolds had brought me a pot of
white tulips. That night I hung my mother’s
picture over the mantel in the dining-room, and put
the tulips beneath it. It gave me a feeling of
comfort; I had never seen my mother’s grave,
or put flowers on it.
I have said before that I do not know anything about
the law. I believe that the Ladley case was unusual,
in several ways. Mr. Ladley had once been well
known in New York among the people who frequent the
theaters, and Jennie Brice was even better known.
A good many lawyers, I believe, said that the police
had not a leg to stand on, and I know the case was
watched with much interest by the legal profession.
People wrote letters to the newspapers, protesting
against Mr. Ladley being held. And I believe
that the district attorney, in taking him before the
grand jury, hardly hoped to make a case.
But he did, to his own surprise, I fancy, and the
trial was set for May. But in the meantime, many
curious things happened.
In the first place, the week following Mr. Ladley’s
arrest my house was filled up with eight or ten members
of a company from the Gaiety Theater, very cheerful
and jolly, and well behaved. Three men, I think,
and the rest girls. One of the men was named Bellows,
John Bellows, and it turned out that he had known
Jennie Brice very well.
From the moment he learned that, Mr. Holcombe hardly
left him. He walked to the theater with him and
waited to walk home again. He took him out to
restaurants and for long street-car rides in the mornings,
and on the last night of their stay, Saturday, they
got gloriously drunk together—Mr. Holcombe,
no doubt, in his character of Ladley—and
came reeling in at three in the morning, singing.
Mr. Holcombe was very sick the next day, but by Monday
he was all right, and he called me into the room.
“We’ve got him, Mrs. Pitman,” he
said, looking mottled but cheerful. “As
sure as God made little fishes, we’ve got him.”
That was all he would say, however. It seemed
he was going to New York, and might be gone for a
month. “I’ve no family,” he
said, “and enough money to keep me. If
I find my relaxation in hunting down criminals, it’s
a harmless and cheap amusement, and—it’s
my own business.”
