A Woman at Bay: or, A Fiend in Skirts

Nicholas Carter

Nicholas Carter

A Woman at Bay Or A Fiend in Skirts

CHAPTER I.

THE KING OF THE YEGGMEN

Four men were seated around a camp fire made of old railroad ties, over which a kettle was boiling merrily, where it hung from an improvised crane above the blaze.

Around, on the ground, were scattered a various assortment of tin cans, some of which had been hammered more or less straight to serve for plates, and it was evident from the general appearance of things around the camp that a meal had just been disposed of, and that the four men who had consumed it were now determined to make themselves as comfortable as possible. The kettle that boiled over the fire contained nothing but water – water with which one of the four men had jocularly said he intended to bathe.

These four men were about as rough-looking specimens of humanity as can be imagined. Not one of them had been shaved in so long a time that their faces were covered with a hairy growth which suggested full beards; indeed, their faces looked as if the only shaving they had ever received, or rather the nearest approach to a shave, had been done by a pair of scissors, cropping the hair as closely as possible.

The camp they had made was located just inside the edge of a wood through which a railway had been built, and it was down in a hollow beside a brook, so that the light of their fire was effectually screened from view, save that the glow of it shone fitfully upon the drooping leaves over their heads.

The four men were tramps – hoboes, or yeggmen, of the most pronounced types, if their appearance went for anything at all.

Their conversation was couched entirely in the slang of their order; a talk that is almost unintelligible to outsiders.

But, strangely enough, the four men were not hoboes at all; neither were they yeggmen; and the lingo they talked so glibly among themselves, although perfect in its enunciation, and in the words that were used, was entirely assumed.

For those four men were Nick Carter, the New York detective, and his three assistants, Chick, Patsy, and Ten-Ichi, a Japanese.

The president of the E. & S. W. R. R. Co. had sent for Nick Carter a week before this particular evening, and as soon as he and the detective were alone together in the president's private room, he had opened the conversation abruptly with this question:

"Carter, have you ever happened to hear of a character known as Hobo Harry, the Hobo King?"

"I have," replied the detective. "I have heard about him in a vague sort of way. I have no particular information about him, if that is what you mean."

"No; I merely wished to know if you were aware that there is such a character."

"Yes. I have heard of the fellow."

"Do you know what he is?"

"A yeggman, isn't he?"

"He is the king of all the yeggmen. He is the master mind, the controlling spirit of all the outlawry and lawlessness that goes on from one end of our big railroad system to the other. Hobo Harry costs us, in round numbers, anywhere from three to ten thousand dollars a month."

"Really?" asked the detective, smiling.

"Yes – really. This is no joke. There isn't a bit of thievery, however petty it may be, or a scheme of robbery, however grand and great, which they do not turn their hands to under the guidance of Hobo Harry – and we have about got to the end of our patience."

"I suppose," said Nick, "that all this means that you want me to find Hobo Harry for you. Is that the idea?"

"That is precisely the idea. Do you suppose you can do it?"

"I can, at least, make the effort."

"I should tell you one thing before you become too sanguine."

"Well, what is it?"

"Hobo Harry is largely a mystery. There are those – detectives, I mean – who insist that he does not exist at all, save in imagination."

Nick nodded.

"They say that he is only a figurehead; that he is only a name; that he is in reality an imperceptible, intangible idol, whom hoboes worship, and to whom they refer as their common leader, while, in reality, there is no real leader at all."