A Quaker Detective: A Story of the Road

by Judge Clark

We were five passengers in all; two ladies on the back seat, a middle-aged gentleman and a Quaker in the middle, and myself on one in front.

The two ladies might have been mother and daughter, aunt and niece, governess and charge, or might have sustained any other relationship which made it proper for two ladies to travel together unattended.

The middle-aged gentleman was sprightly and talkative. He soon struck up an acquaintance with the ladies, toward whom, in his zeal to do, he rather over did the agreeable — bowing and smiling and chattering over his shoulder in a way painfully suggestive, at his time of life, of a ‘crick’ in the neck. He was evidently a gay Luthario.

The Quaker wore the uniform of his sect, and confined his speeches, as a parliamentarian would save his credit by doing, to simple “yeas” and “nays.”  As for myself I make it an invariable rule of the road to be merely a looker on and a listener.

Toward evening, I was aroused from one of those reveries from which a young man without either being a poet or a lover, will sometimes fall, by the abrupt query from the talkative gentleman:

“Are you armed, sir?”

“I am not,” I answered, astonished, no doubt visible, at the question.

“I am sorry to hear it,” he replied, “for before reaching our next stopping place it will be several hours in the night, and we must pass over a portion of the road on which more than one robbery is reported to have been committed.”

The ladies turned pale, but the stranger done his best to reassure them.

“Not that I think there is the slightest danger at present,” he resumed; “only when one is responsible for the safety of ladies, you know, such a thing as a pistol in reach would materially add to one’s confidence.”

“Your principles, my friend,” addressing the Quaker, “I… Read More