Shadow, the Mysterious Detective/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED.
During the next afternoon all of the most active parties in this written drama were congregated in the parlor belonging to a suite of rooms at one of our second-class hotels.
Here Mat Morris had been taken, as he could be more comfortable here than at any other place, not knowing where to find his mother.
Here also had Helen Dilt been conveyed in a carriage.
Shadow was there.
And lastly, I had just put in an appearance.
Both Mat and Helen understood that to Shadow they owed their deliverance, and both were deeply grateful and could not thank him enough.
After a while I said plainly that there was a mystery underlying all this which I should like to have explained.
"You shall hear the explanation," said Shadow. "I am not what I seem; I am not a man; I am Nellie Millbank, to whom you were kind enough—although a stranger—to lend the money with which to decently inter the body of her murdered lover."
"I sometimes suspected as much," I said, while Mat and Helen both opened their eyes with surprise at learning that Shadow was a woman.
"Now," said I to Shadow, "it was to you whom I paid five hundred dollars?"
"Yes."
"Then"—to Mat—"how was it possible for you to send that same five hundred dollars to your mother?"
"I found the money," said Mat.
"I lost it," said Shadow.
Here was one of those little things which had so deeply puzzled me made light as day.
By questioning, by listening when all the parties talked freely, I finally understood all the ins and outs of the thrilling drama in real life.
In his search after Helen, and in his endeavor to find her abductor, Mat had been engaged only a short while when he rendered himself suspected by the sugar-house gang, had been arrested and clapped into the Black Hole, where he had been kept a close prisoner ever since.
So it turned out that Mat Morris, whom I had believed the most active character in the drama, was for the greater part of the time kept in a condition of forced inactivity.
Nellie Millbank told me how, after having seen her lover laid away in his resting-place, she had taken an oath to avenge his death.
Knowing how slight a clew she had on which to work—the most vague description of the murderer—she had adopted a male attire, and started out with the plan of insinuating herself into the confidence of such a man as she might suspect, and lead him to convicting himself.
Starting out on this plan, she had just caught sight of an individual whom she thought answered the description of the murderer, and was shaking her finger after him when I saw her shadow.
She heard the remark I dropped at the time, and, when she afterward wrote to me, she adopted the name my remark had suggested.
The five hundred dollars I gave to her she had lost, and Mat Morris had found, which explained the complications arising from finding bills which I recognized in the hands of Mrs. Morris.
I also then learned how it was that Shadow had come to be in the sugar-house at the time of handing me that note, although that is something concerning which the reader needs no explanation, the detective's purpose being made evident at the time.
And this is so as regards many other incidents in connection with Shadow, mysteries to me at the time of their occurrence, but made plain to the reader in various places.
And this is so also as regards Helen Dilt.
We had all her adventures and experiences to listen to, which have been recorded in their proper places.
Late in the afternoon Mrs. Morris, who had been sent for, put in an appearance, having been found and sent here.
A happier woman never drew the breath of life than she was when she was enabled to clasp both her loved ones to her heart.
Nellie Millbank and I drew a little apart, that the others might have the first few minutes of meeting to themselves.
In response to a question of mine as to how she had gathered up all the threads of the tangled skein, she replied:
"It was through McGinnis. He was the tool of Brown, the abductor of Helen, as well as the murderer of my lost one. I suspected him rightly, after many previous failures, threw myself in his way in the character of a thing which I care not to name, and when he was in liquor he told me all. He convicted himself out of his own mouth."
"Where is McGinnis?"
Shadow turned away. He pretended not to have heard my question, and I did not press it.
Together we five had supped, and a right merry party it was—although I thought that the merriment of Nellie Millbank was rather forced.
This I thought might be because of a natural embarrassment at being in men's clothing after having revealed her true sex.
Early in the afternoon I had heard of the discovery of a dead body on an East River pier. The man was handcuffed and gagged, and had been repeatedly stabbed. Already it was becoming spoken of as the most brutal murder on record.
That evening I was sent to look at the body and to give any assistance I could toward working up the case.
The moment I reached the Morgue and the sheet was drawn down, I understood the reason why Shadow had pretended not to hear my question.
The body was that of McGinnis.
On his breast had been found pinned a bit of paper, bearing these words:
"This man died a righteous death. He was a murderer, and meets the same fate he dealt to another. His victim is avenged.
"Search for the person who inflicted this punishment will be in vain."
This last sentence several shrewd detectives thought implied that the writer intended self-destruction.
This view I bolstered up to the best of my ability.
Needless to say, the murderer of McGinnis was never discovered.
In fact, none of us who knew Shadow—confound it! Nellie Millbank—ever saw her afterward, unless—— Well, one day long afterward I entered a horse-car; opposite to me sat two black-garbed sisters of mercy. For just one fleeting second the eyes of one of them encountered mine.
It may not have been Nellie Millbank, but I have always thought it was, and hope that I was right.
Dick Stanton, the false detective, was brought from the private cell in which I had placed him, and was convicted and "sent up" with the rest of the sugar-house gang.
Tige and her companion hyenas were roughly dealt with.
Murder was charged to their account, and was so well sustained that they all received life sentences.
Brown was sent to prison for twenty years, a sentence long enough to insure his never leaving the prison alive.
Helen Dilt was not long kept out of the money which her rascally uncle had so long deprived her of, and the first thing she did was to buy and present to her kind benefactress, Mrs. Morris, a completely furnished home.
Not so very long since I met a gentleman in the street, who clasped me warmly by the hand, as he said:
"Howard, it's a boy, and we think of naming it after you."
The speaker was Mat Morris.
He and Helen have been married some years now, and this boy he spoke of is not the first baby by—well, a few.
And thus we draw to a close, and with genuine regret bid adieu to the history of the strange being who was so long a mystery to me under the indefinite title of Shadow.
[THE END.]