Double Trouble Part 4

VII

ENTER THE LEGAL MIND

The need of lucre never looms so large As when 'tis gotten in some devious way: It mitigates the blackness of the charge That every nether level yielded pay.

The man who dares e'en to the prison's marge Should bring back what he went for--or should stay!

The need of lucre never looms so large As when 'tis gotten in some devious way.

Men can o'erlook the stain upon the targe, If from its boss the jewel shoots its ray; Or blood upon the pirate's sable barge Covered by silks' and satins' bright array-- The need of lucre never looms so large As when 'tis gotten in some devious way.

--_Rondels of the Curb_.

Morning pa.s.sed to noon, and the day aged into afternoon, before Amidon rose from the deep sleep which (according to Le Claire's prediction) followed his evening with her and the professor. With that odd sense of bewilderment which the early riser feels at this violation of habit, he went into the cafe for his belated breakfast. Impatient to finish the meal so that he might haste to the promised interview, he studied the menu, and with his eye scouted the room for a waiter--failing to bestow even the slightest glance on a man seated opposite. This fact, however, did not prevent the stranger from scrutinizing Amidon's face, his dress, and even his hands, as if each minutest detail were vitally important. He even dropped his napkin so as to make an excuse for looking under the table, and thus getting a good view of Florian's boots. Finally he spoke, as if continuing a broken-off conversation.

"As I said a while ago," he remarked, "Browning falls short of being a poet, just as a marble-cutter falls short of being a sculptor. You were quoting _Love Among the Ruins_, as the train stopped at Elm Springs Junction; or was it _Evelyn_----"

Amidon's eyes, during this apparently aimless disquisition, had been drawn from his meal to the speaker. He saw an elderly gentleman, clothed in the black frock-coat and black tie of the rural lawyer of the old school. His eyes shot keen and kindly glances from the deep ambush of great white brows, and his mouth was hidden under a snowy mustache. His features made up for a somewhat marked poverty of shape by a luxuriance of ruddy color, the culminating point of which was to be found in the broad and fleshy nose. His voice, soft and gentle when he began, swelled out, as he spoke, into something of the orator's orotund. When Amidon looked at him, the speaker returned the gaze in full measure, and leaning across the table, pointed his finger at his auditor, and slowly uttered the words, "--as--the train--stopped--at--Elm Springs Junction!"

"Why, Judge Blodgett!" exclaimed Amidon, "can this be you?"

"Can it be I?" exclaimed the judge. "Can it be me! No difficulty about that. Never mind the handshaking just yet--after a while, maybe.

When it comes to the can-it-be part, how about you? How about the past five years, and Jennie Baggs keeping a place for you every meal for all this time, up to the present hour? I tell you, Florian, letting me down in that case of Amidon versus Cattermole, without a sc.r.a.p of evidence, and getting me licked by a young pract.i.tioner who studied in my office, was bad--was d.a.m.nable; but an only sister, Florian! and not one word in five years!"

"She's well, then, Jennie is?"

"She's as well, Florian, as a woman with the sorrow you've brought to her, and the mother of two infants, can be. But why do you ask?--why do you ask?--why is it necessary to go through the work of surplusage of asking?"

"Children, eh?" said Florian. "Good for Jennie! And how's Baggs?"

"Oh, Baggs, yes--why, Baggs has come through it all with his health about unimpaired, Baggs has! But no Baggs court of inquiry is going to switch me off the examination I'm now conducting; and I tell you, Mr.

Amidon, you can't dodge me. What double life took you away from home, and property, and everything?"

"Judge Blodgett," said Mr. Amidon, in that low voice which, with the English language as the medium of communication, is known as the danger-signal the world over, "the term 'double life' has a meaning which is insulting. Don't use it again."

"Well, well, Florian," said the judge, evidently pleased, "sustaining the motion to strike that out, the question remains. You aren't obliged to answer, you know; but you know, too, what not answering it means."

"Judge," said Amidon, after a long pause, "to say that I don't know where I have been, or what I have been doing, since June twenty-seventh, 1896, until yesterday morning when I came to my senses in a moving sleeping-car, won't satisfy you; but it's the truth."

The judge looked off toward the ceiling in the manner of a jurist considering some complex argument, but was silent.

"Now I have found a way," said Amidon, "of having all this explained.

Come with me, and let's find out. There may be complications; I may need your help. You are the one man in all the world that I was just wis.h.i.+ng for."

"Complications, eh?" said the judge. "Well, well! Let us see!"

And now he dropped into the old manner so well known to his companion as his office style. Piece by piece, he drew from Amidon his story.

He dropped back to previous parts of the narrative, and elicited repet.i.tions. He slurred over crucial points as if he did not see their bearing, and then artfully a.s.sumed minute variations of the tale, but was always corrected.

"The prosecution is obliged to rest its case," said he, at last.

"You're not crazy, or all my studies in diseases of the mind have done me no good. Your story hangs together as no fiction could. To believe you, brands us both as lunatics. Come on and let's see what your mesmerist frauds have to say. As a specialist in facts, I'm a drowning man catching at a straw. Come on: mesmerism, or astrology, or Moqui snake-dance, it's all one to me!"

Up the stairs again, this time with Judge Blodgett, warily snuffing the air, and shy of both Bohemia and Benares. Into the presence of Madame le Claire, now gowned appropriately for the morning, and looking--extraordinary, it is true, with her party-colored hair and luminous eyes--but not so jungly as when she greeted the despairing sight of Amidon the night before.

"Madame, and sir," said the judge, "as Mr. Amidon's friend and legal adviser, I am here to protect his interests."

"So! Goot!" said the professor. "Bud te matter under gonsideration is psychical, nod beguniary. Howefer, if you are interested in te realm of te supliminal, if you care for mental science----"

"Sir," said the judge, "I may almost claim to be a specialist (so far as a country pract.i.tioner is permitted to specialize) in senile and paretic dementia, since I had the honor to represent the proponents in the will case of Snoke versus Snoke. But it's only fair to say that I regard hypnotism as humbug--only fair."

"Goot, goot!" said the professor delightedly. "To temonstrate to an honest ant indellichent skeptic, is te rarest of brifileches. Ve vill now broceed to temonstrate. Here is our friendt Herr Amidon avokened in a car after fife years of lostness; he has anodder man's dotes, anodder man's d.i.c.ket, letters--unt all. He gomes to Madame le Claire ant Blatherwick. He is hypnotized out of te Amidon blane of being, ant into anodder. He is mate to gife himself avay. Now ve vill broceed to dell aboudt his life since he vas lost--is it a dest, no?"

"Huh!" snorted the judge.

"Go on," cried Amidon; "tell me the story!"

"Vell," said the professor, "for four veeks after you left Elm Springs Chunction, you vandered--not, Clara?"

"Wandered," said Clara, "and to so many places that I can't remember them. Then you found oil, or traces of it--I can't get that very plainly--on a farm at Bunn's Ferry, Pennsylvania; and bought an option on the farm. Then you opened an office in Bellevale, and have been there in the oil business ever since.

"How's he been doin' financially?" interjected the judge.

"He has made a fortune," said Clara. "I believe him to be one of the princ.i.p.al men of the town, socially and in a business way. He didn't tell me this, but we think the circ.u.mstances seem to indicate it."

"Te sairc.u.mstances," said the professor, filling a pause, "show it."

"How is it," said the judge, "that no one has ever heard of his Bellevale career out in Hazelhurst, if he's so prominent? We read, out there, and once in a while one of us goes outside the corporation."

"His name," said Madame le Claire, "in Bellevale is not Florian Amidon."

"What is it?" cried Amidon. "Tell it to me!"

Madame le Claire restrained him with a calm glance.

"It is Eugene Bra.s.sfield," said she.

"It is your own dotes," cried the professor gleefully, "your own d.i.c.ket, your own gorrespondence!"

Amidon was feeling in his breast-pocket for something. He withdrew his hand, holding in it a letter, and looked from it to Madame le Claire questioningly.

"Oh, yes!" said she, not quite in her usual manner, "it's yours. It's from Miss Elizabeth Waldron, of Bellevale, your affianced wife."

"Aha!" said the judge. "Now will you get mad when I speak of a double life? Engaged, hey?"

"I never saw the--the lady in my life," was the reply; "so how can I be--can I be--engaged to her?"

"In te Amidon blane of gonsciousness," said the professor, "you are stranchers. In te Bra.s.sfield pairsonality, you are:--_Gott im Himmel_, you are stuck on her, stuck on her--not, Clara? Vas he not gracey?

Only Clara cut it short in te temonstration; but as a luffer, in te Bra.s.sfield blane, you are vot you call hot stuff."

"You had better read the gentlemen your notes," said Madame le Claire coldly. "And please excuse me. I hope to see you both again." And with a sinuous bow, she swept from the room.