The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton Part 8

Cringing and fawning, the outlaw heard what he was required to do. He was to write a letter. In this, he was to tell of the method of his capture. He was to say he was confined in a second-story room, feet and hands shackled, and that he was also chained to a staple in the floor. (That this all might be true, the doctor took him to a second-story room and so fettered him.) He found himself able to use his hands to write, and, happily, discovered writing material and stamps upon a table. He would write a letter and throw it on the porch below, where perhaps the postman would find it and send it to its destination. He asked help. His friends must come that night. The doctor would be on guard, and who could say he would not call in others? The doors and windows were all well secured, all but a cellar window on the east side. (Of this, the doctor informed him, that he, the doctor, might not be guilty of instigating the writing of anything that was false in any particular.) They must enter by this window. The door leading above stairs from the cellar could be easily forced and the noise thus occasioned could not be heard outside of the house.

They must come at two in the morning. Come before another dawn, as the doctor was going to hold him one day before turning him over to the police, hoping the gang would do something to involve themselves in some way they would not if the police were after them with a hue and cry.

The outlaw wrote the letter as ordered, addressed it to Barry O'Toole, and threw it out of the window. It fell beyond the porch, on the ground. But this the doctor remedied by hiring a small boy for ten cents to pick it up and put it in a mail box. After which, the doctor betook himself to the nearest extensive hardware establishment.

At two o'clock the next morning, the beams of a dark lantern shone athwart the darkness of the cellar of Dr. McDill's residence.

"It's all right, boys. I can smell escaping gas, but it's all right.

There's n.o.body in there. Now for the doctor. We'll kill him and all who are in there with him, and burn the house," said a voice behind the lantern, and one after another, eleven burly men dropped into the cellar through the narrow east window high in the wall. As the feet of the last man struck the ground, there was a sound as of a rope jerked by some one in the orifice by which they had just entered, and they heard two succeeding crashes within the cellar, followed by the slam of an iron shutter over the window. There was a sound of a spasmodic rush upon the cellar stairs and a beating upon the door, and then a succession of softer sounds, as of men rolling down stairs, and then silence.

A match was struck upon the outside of the iron shutter. It revealed the face of Dr. McDill, lighting a cigar.

"The gas alone would have been almost sufficient. But when all those bottles of ether and chloroform broke---- I had better open the window so it will work off and I can get them out. I will write to my wife to stay away two months longer. Olga is dead and Kate is gone. I'll discharge August to-morrow, as he deserves. The field is clear."

One morning, as Hans Olson, cook of the King Olaf Magnus, staunch schooner engaged in the s.h.i.+ngle trade between Chicago and the city of Manistee, state of Michigan, on this particular morning lying in the Chicago River--on this morning, as Mr. Olson was pouring overboard some dishwater, preparing the breakfast for the yet sleeping crew, he was horrified to see floating in the current that would eventually carry them past the great city of St. Louis, twelve naked human arms.

Despite his horror and alarm at this grewsome array of severed members, he noted that so far as he could observe, they were all left arms, forearms, disjointed at the elbows. Subsequent examination but added to the mystery. It was no trick of medical students intended to set the town agog. They were not dissecting subjects, but limbs lately taken from living bodies, and they were detached with the highest skill known to the art of chirurgery. The town talked and it was a day's wonder, but the solving of the mystery proving impossible, it was pa.s.sing into tradition when all were horrified anew to hear that Johannes Klubertanz, a member of the great and honest German-American element, while walking through Lincoln Park early one morning, stumbled over some objects which, upon examination, proved to be twelve human forearms, _right forearms_!

Again were the wisest baffled in even guessing at this riddle, as they were a third time, when one Prosper B. Shaw came with the story that while rowing down in the drainage ca.n.a.l, he had come upon, floating gently along, dissevered at the knee joint, _twelve human legs_!

The whole community shuddered at the dark secret hidden in their midst, but at last came the answer, yet not the answer. Of all strange crews that mortal sight has gazed upon, that was the strangest, that dozen men who out of nowhere appeared suddenly in the streets one morning, armless all, all with wooden left legs. Their story you would ask in vain, for just the little chord by which the tongue forms intelligible words was gone. Their babblings came just to the border of articulate speech, but not beyond. Torrents of half-formed words they poured forth, but only half-formed, and to their mouthed jabber the crowd listened without understanding. Did you thrust a pencil in their jaws and bid them write their tale? Gone was some little muscle that grips the jaws and the pencils lolled between teeth that could not nip them. And as for their lips, oh, their mouths, their mouths!

Such an example of the chirurgery that has to do with the altering of the human face had never before been witnessed, for nature had never made those faces. One such countenance she might have made in cruel sport, but never twelve, and twelve altogether, as like as peas in a pod, twelve human jack o'lanterns, twelve travesties upon humanity's front. Howsoever they might once have looked, not even their own mothers could know them now. Around each eye the same wrinkles led away. On each face was a bulbous nose. But the mouths, oh, the mouths!

Each was drawn back over the teeth in a perpetual grin, each was upturned at corners which ended well nigh in the middle of the cheek.

Here were the victims of the horrors that had made the city shudder, but dumb and unrecognizable. In all the thousands that looked at them, not one could say he had ever seen them before. In all these thousands, there was not one to whom they could speak. There were their stiff faces, frozen into that terrible perpetual grin, so many idols of wood, save for their eyes, and they were the only things that lived in their dead faces.

Such rudimentary human beings it would be hard to conceive, and so after a while it occurred to some one that the same scientific methods that discover and disclose to us the modes of life, the habits, and even thoughts of primitive and rudimentary man, might be devoted to establis.h.i.+ng a means of communication with them and unveil the secret the whole world was eager to know. Accordingly, they were taken to the University of Chicago and turned over to the department of anthropology. The learned expounders of this science were not long in devising a simple means of communication. The twelve unfortunates were seated upon a recitation bench and a doctor of philosophy wrote out an alphabet upon the blackboard.

"One rap of your foot will be A," said the doctor of philosophy. "Two will be B. Two raps, a pause, and one will be C. We will soon learn your story."

At this moment, the reverberations of a prodigious blow upon the door outside echoed through the room, "bang, bang--bang, bang, bang--bang."

Unaccountably startled, as if at the hearing of some portent, the professor stood rooted to the spot for a moment, and then was about to leap to the door, when the simulacrums before him sprang to their feet and with a tremendous stamping, smote their wooden legs upon the floor, "stamp, stamp--stamp, stamp, stamp--stamp."

The professor stared at the twelve mutes. There were their immobile faces, as wooden as their wooden legs, wearing their perpetual grin, but the westering sun shone on their eyes and there he saw an abject, grovelling fear, dreadful to behold, the master pa.s.sion of twelve souls, slaves to some mysterious will which had just made itself manifest out of the unseen. By what means the will had gained this ascendancy, the terrible disfigurements of their remnants of bodies told only too well, and he who ran could read the utter prostration before the power which in their lives had been the greatest and most terrible in the universe. Again, far off in a distant corridor of the building, slowly rumbled to them: "knock, knock--knock; knock, knock--knock," and the twelve unfortunates, like so many automatons, gave token of their obedience. They had been warned to keep the secret.

And so was foiled the attempts of the learned anthropologists to hold converse with these rudimentary beings. The alphabet of such elaborate devisings went for naught. Never did the twelve persons in the state of primitive culture get further than the letter C: "knock, knock--knock; knock, knock--knock."

_What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Fifth Gift of the Emir._

"I am at a loss to understand," said Mr. Middleton, "why you have ent.i.tled the narration you have just related, 'The Pleasant Adventures of Dr. McDill.' For to my mind, they seemed anything but pleasant adventures."

"How so?" asked the emir. "Is it not pleasant to thwart the machinations and defeat the evil intentions of the villains such as composed the confederacy that sought the doctor's life? Does there not reside in mankind a sense of justice which rejoices at seeing meted out to wrong-doers the deserts of their crimes?"

To which Mr. Middleton replying with a nod of thoughtful a.s.sent, after a proper period of rumination upon the words of the emir, that accomplished ruler continued:

"Despite the boasted protection of the law, how often is a man compelled to rely for his protection upon his own prowess, skill or address. There are many occasions when right under the nose of the police, one saves himself by the resort to physical strength, weapons, or the use of a cajoling tongue. Theoretically, Dr. McDill was amply protected by the mantle of the law. In reality, it was man to man as much as if he had met his foes in the Arabian desert, with none but himself and them and the vultures. Do you go armed?"

"No," replied Mr. Middleton, with a flippant smile; "but I can go pretty fast, and that has heretofore done as well as going armed."

"Young man," said the emir, sternly, "a bullet can outstrip your fleetest footsteps. There may never be but one occasion when you will need a weapon, but on that occasion the possession of the means of protection may spell the difference between life and life."

Hardly had he uttered them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his grat.i.tude toward him as a benefactor.

Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement of the wisdom of what the emir had said, Mr. Middleton began to make preparations to go. But Prince Achmed bade him wait, and saying a few words to Mesrour in the Arabic language, the blackamore brought to him a pair of pistols of a formidable aspect. In sooth, one could hardly tell whether they ought to be called pistols, or culverins. In the shape of the stocks alone could anyone detect that they were pistols.

The bore of each was more than an inch in diameter, and the octagonal barrels of thick steel, heavily inlaid with silver, were a foot and a half long. The handles, which were in proportion to the barrels and so long that four hands could grasp them, were so completely covered with an inlay of pearl that no wood was visible. Taking one of them, the emir rammed home a great load of powder, upon which he placed a handful of b.a.l.l.s as large as marbles. Having served the second likewise, he handed the pair to Mr. Middleton.

"Take them. Protected by them, you need have little fear. But woe betide the man who stands in front of them, for so wide is the distribution of their charge, that he must be a most indifferent marksman who could not do execution with them."

Thanking the emir for the gift and the entertainment and instruction of his discourse, Mr. Middleton departed. Impressed though he had been by Prince Achmed's counsel and by the lesson to be derived from the recital of the experiences of Dr. McDill, Mr. Middleton did not carry the pistols as he went about his daily vocation. It was impossible to so bestow them about his garments that they did not cause large and unsightly protuberances and to carry them openly was not to be thought of. Their weight, too, was so great that it was burdensome to carry them in any manner. Coming into his room unexpectedly in the middle of the forenoon of the Thursday following the acquisition of the weapons, he surprised Hilda Svenson, maid of all work, in the act of examining one of them, which she had extracted from the place where they lay concealed in the lower bureau drawer beneath a pile of underclothing.

With a start of guilty surprise, Hilda let the pistol fall to the floor. Fortunately it did not go off, but nonetheless was he convinced that he ought to dispose of the two weapons, for any day Hilda might shoot herself with one, while on the weekly sheet changing day, Mrs.

Leschinger, the landlady, might shoot herself with the other. There was no place in the room where he could conceal them from the painstaking investigations of Hilda and Mrs. Leschinger, and the expedient of extracting the charges not occurring to him, he felt that it was clearly his duty to remove the lives of the two women from jeopardy by disposing of the pistols. He was in truth pained at the necessity of parting with the gifts which the emir had made with such solicitude for his welfare and as some a.s.suagement to this regret he sought to dispose of them as profitably as possible. With this end in view, he made an appointment for a private audience after hours with Mr. Sidney Kuppenheimer, who conducted a large loan bank on Madison Street and was reputed a connoisseur and admirer of all kinds of curios.

On the evening for which he had made the appointment, he set forth, intending to make an early and short call upon his friend Chauncy Stackelberg and wife, before repairing to Mr. Kuppenheimer's place of business. But such was the engaging quality of the conversation of the newly married couple, abounding both in humor and good sense, and so interested was he in hearing of the haps and mishaps of married life, a state he hoped to enter as soon as fortune and the young lady of Englewood should be propitious, that he was unaware of the flight of time until in the midst of a pause in the conversation, he heard the cathedral clock Mrs. Stackelberg's uncle had given her as a wedding present, solemnly tolling the hour of eleven. The hour Mr.

Kuppenheimer had named was one hour agone. To have kept the appointment, he should have started two hours before.

Another half hour had flown before Mr. Middleton, having paused to partake of some chow-chow recently made by Mrs. Stackelberg and highly recommended by her liege, finally left the house, carrying a pistol in either hand. The night was somewhat cloudy, but although there was neither moon nor stars, it was much lighter than on some nights when all the minor luminaries are ablaze, or the moon itself is aloft, s.h.i.+ning in its first or last quarter, a phenomenon remarked upon by an able Italian scientist in the middle of the last century and by him attributed to some luminous quality that inheres in the clouds themselves. Mr. Middleton was walking along engrossed in thoughts of the scene of domestic bliss he had lately quitted and in dreams of the even more delightful home he hoped to some day enjoy with the young lady of Englewood, when he suddenly became cognizant of four individuals a short distance away, comporting themselves in an unusual and peculiar manner. Cautiously approaching them as quietly as possible, he perceived that it was two robbers despoiling two citizens of their valuables, one pair standing in the middle of the street, one on the sidewalk, the citizens with their hands elevated above their heads in a strained and uncomfortable att.i.tude, while each robber--with back to him--was pointing a revolver with one hand and turning pockets inside out with the other.

With a resolution and celerity that astonished him, as he afterwards dwelt upon it in retrospect, Mr. Middleton rushed silently upon the nearest robber, him in the street, and dealt him a terrible blow upon the head with the barrel of a pistol. Without a sound, the robber sank to the earth, whereupon the citizen, whether he had lost his head through fear, or thought Mr. Middleton a new and more dangerous outlaw, fled away like the wind. s.n.a.t.c.hing the bag of valuables in the unconscious thief's hands, Mr. Middleton made toward the other robber, who, to his astonishment, hissed without looking around:

"What did you let your man get away for, you fool? Try and make yourself useful somehow. Hold this swag and cover the man, so I can have both hands and get through quick."

Taking the valuables the robber handed him, Mr. Middleton with calmness and deliberation placed them in his pockets, after which he placed a muzzle of a pistol in the back of the robber's neck and sharply commanded:

"Hands up!"

Up went the robber's hands as if he were a jumping-jack jerked by a string, whereupon his late victim, doubtless animated by the same emotions as those of the other citizens, fled away like the wind, but not in silence, for at every jump he bellowed, "Thieves, murder, help!"

A window slammed up in the house before which they were standing and the glare of an electric bicycle lamp played full upon Mr. Middleton and his prisoner.

"I've got him," said Mr. Middleton, proudly.

"Got him! Got him!" gasped an astonished voice. "Well, of all effrontery! Got him, you miserable thief? The police are coming and they'll get you, and I can identify you, if they don't succeed in nabbing you red-handed."

Shocked and almost paralyzed, Mr. Middleton turned to expostulate with the misled householder, when the robber, seizing the opportunity, fled away like the wind, bellowing at every jump, "Thieves, murder, help!"

and as if aroused by the sound of his compatriot's voice, the thief who had been lying unconscious in the street all this while, arose and hastened away, somewhat unsteadily, it is true, yet at a considerable degree of speed.

It did not require any extended reflective processes for Mr. Middleton to tell himself that if he waited for the police, he would be in a very bad plight, for he had the stolen property upon his person, the thieves had gone, and even if the victims were able to say he was not one of the two original thieves--which their disturbed state of mind made most uncertain--they would be likely to declare him a thief notwithstanding, a charge which the stolen property on his person would bear out. The police could now be heard down the street and the householder was making the welkin ring with vociferous shouts. With a sudden access of rage at this individual whose well-intended efforts had thwarted justice and might yet fasten crime upon innocence, Mr.

Middleton pointed a pistol at the upper pane of the window where shone the bicycle lamp. There was a roar that shook the air, followed by a crash of gla.s.s and the clatter of a dozen bullets upon the brick wall of the house, and a shriek of terror from the householder and the bicycle lamp instantly vanished. With a heart strangely at peace in the midst of the dangers that encompa.s.sed him, Mr. Middleton sped up the street, dashed through an alleyway, back for a block on the next street in the direction he had just come, and thenceforth leisurely and with an appearance of virtue he did not need to feign, made his way home without molestation.

Upon examining the booty that had so strangely come into his possession, Mr. Middleton was at a loss to think which were the greater villains, those who had robbed, or those who had been robbed.

One wallet contained five hundred and forty dollars in greenbacks and some memoranda accompanying it showed that it was a corruption fund to be used in bribing voters at an approaching election. The other wallet contained sixty dollars and a detailed plan for bribery, fraud, and intimidation which was to be carried out in one of the doubtful wards.

There were also some silver coins, and two gold watches bearing no names or marks that could identify their owners, but the detailed plan contained the name of the politician who had drawn it up and who was to be benefited by its successful accomplishment. This was a clue by following which Mr. Middleton might have found the parties who had been robbed and return their property, but he was deterred from doing so by several considerations. The knowledge he had of the proposed fraud was exceedingly dangerous to the interests of one of the political parties and to the personal interests of one of the bosses of that party. It would be clearly to their advantage to have Mr.

Middleton jailed and so put where there would be no danger that he would divulge the information in his possession. Besides this, the money was to be used for corrupt purposes, would go into the hands of evil men who would spend it evilly. Deprived of it, a thoroughly bad man was less likely to be elected. For these moral and prudential reasons, Mr. Middleton saw that it was plainly his duty to the public and to himself to retain the money. The victims, bearing in mind that the recovery of the money by the police would also mean the discovery of the incriminating doc.u.ments and that any persecution of the robbers might incite them to sell the doc.u.ments to the opposite party, would be very chary about doing or saying anything. But there was the householder, who surely would tell his tale and who had an idea of Mr.

Middleton's personal appearance. Accordingly, that excellent young man disposed of the gold watches to one Isaac Fiscovitz on lower State Street, and with the results of the exchange purchased an entirely new suit, new hat, and new shoes. The incriminating doc.u.ments, he placed under the carpet in his room against a time when he might see an opportunity to safely dispose of them to the pecuniary advantage of himself and to the discomfiture of the contemptible creature whose handiwork they were.

He said nothing of these transactions when on the appointed evening he once more sat in the presence of the urbane prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having handed him a bowl of delicately flavored sherbet, Achmed began the narration of The Adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson.