The Strange Adventures of 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 assuagement 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, shining 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 attitude, 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. Snatching 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 glass 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 encompassed 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 documents and that any persecution of the robbers might incite them to sell the documents 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 documents, 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.

The Adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson

Miss Clarissa Dawson was a young lady who had charge of the cutlery counter in one of the great emporiums of State Street. She was reckoned of a pretty wit and not more cutting were the Sheffield razors that were piled before her than the remarks she sometimes made to those who, incited thereto by her reputation for readiness of retort, sought to engage her in a contest of repartee. It was seldom that she issued from these encounters other than triumphant, leaving her presumptuous opponents defeated and chagrined. But in the month of November of the last year, for once she owned to herself that she had been overcome, – overcome, it is true, because her adversary was plainly a person of stupidity, mailed by his doltishness against the keenest sarcasm she could launch against him, yet nevertheless overcome. To her choicest bit of irony, the individual replied, “Somebody left you on the grindstone and forgot to take you off,” to which the most adroit in quips and quirks could find no fitting replication, unless it were to indulge in facial contortion or invective, and Miss Clarissa was too much of a lady to do either. Forced into silence, she had no resource but to seek to transfix him with a protracted and contemptuous stare, which, though failing to disconcert the object, put her in possession of the facts that he had mild blue eyes, that the remnants of his hair were red, that he was slightly above middle height and below middle age, and that there was little about his face and still less his figure to distinguish him from a multitude of men of the average type. Indeed, one could not even conjecture his nationality, for his type was one to be seen in all branches of the Indo-European race. If from a package in his upper left-hand coat pocket, which, broken, disclosed some wieners, you concluded he was of the German nation, a short dudeen in an upper vest pocket would seem to indicate that he was an Irishman. His coat was of black cheviot, new, and of the current cut. His vest was of corduroy, of the kind in vogue in the past decade, while his pantaloons, black, with a faint green line in them, were a compromise, being of a non-commital cut that would never be badly out of style in any modern period.

Sustaining Miss Clarissa’s stare with great composure, he purchased six German razors at thirty-five cents each, six English at fifty, twelve American at the same price, and a stray French razor at sixty-two.

“Don’t you want some razorine?” asked Miss Clarissa. “It makes razors – and other things – sharper.”

“Why don’t you use it, then, instead of lobsterine?” replied the stranger, picking up his package and the change. Miss Clarissa deigning to give no reply but an angry frown, the stranger expressed his gratitude for the amusement he intimated she had afforded him and he further said he hoped he would see her at the Charity Ball and he made bold to ask her to save the second two-step for him, and thereafter departed, having declined Miss Clarissa’s offer to have his purchases sent to his address, an offer dictated not by a spirit of accommodation and kindliness, but by a desire to learn in what part of the city he had his residence.

On the morrow again came a man to purchase razors, of which there was a large number on Miss Clarissa’s counter, traveling men’s samples for sale at ridiculous prices. The man had purchased two dozen razors before Miss Clarissa, noting this similarity to the transactions of the odious person and thereby led to take a good look at him, observed with astonishment that this new man had on exactly the same suit that had been worn by the purchaser of the day before. She recognized the fabric, the color, everything down to a discoloration on the left coat lapel. Here the resemblance ended. The second individual was a young man. He had a heavy shock of abundant hair. He was not more than twenty-eight years old and so far from being commonplace, he was of a distinguished appearance. But as the eyes of Miss Clarissa continued to dwell upon him in some admiration, she told herself that the resemblance did not end with the clothes, after all. His eyes were of the same blue, his hair of the same auburn as those of the man of yesterday. Indeed, the man of yesterday might have been this man with twenty years added on him, with the light of hope and ambition dimmed by contact with the world, and his youthful alertness and dash succeeded by the resigned vacuity of one who has seen none of his early dreams realized. Again did Miss Clarissa ask if he would have his purchases sent to his address, but this time it was not entirely curiosity and the perfunctory performance of a duty, for she would gladly have been of service to one of such a pleasing presence. Communing with himself for a moment, the young man said:

“On the whole, you may. But they must be delivered to me in person, into my own hands. I would take them, but I have a number of other things to take. Remember, they are to be delivered to me in person,” and he handed her a card which announced that his name was Asbury Fuller and on which was written in lead pencil the address of a house in a quarter of the city which, once the most fashionable of all, had suffered from the encroachments of trade and where a few mansions yet occupied by the aristocracy were surrounded by the deserted homes of families which had fled to the newer haunts of fashion, leaving their former abodes to be occupied by boarding mistresses, dentists, doctors, clairvoyants, and a whole host of folk whose names would never be in the papers until their burial permits were issued.

Miss Clarissa did a very peculiar thing. It was already four o’clock of a Saturday afternoon. Instead of immediately giving the package into the hands of the delivery department, she retained it and, at closing time, going to the room where ready made uniforms for messenger boys were kept, she purloined one. Now it must be known that the principal reason for doing a thing so unusual, not to say indiscreet, was her desire to obey the young man’s injunction to hand the razors into his own hands and no others. She had become possessed of the idea that some disaster would befall if the razors came into the possession of any one else. Moreover, the stranger had humbled her in the contest of repartee, which, as a true woman, had made her entertain an admiration for him, and this and his strange disguises and his unaccountable purchases had surrounded him with a mist of romantic mystery she fain would penetrate. Some little time before, it had been Miss Clarissa’s misfortune, through sickness, to lose much of her hair. It had now begun to grow again and resume its former luxuriant abundance, but by removing several switches – of her own hair – and the bolster commonly called a rat, and sleeking her hair down hard with oil, she appeared as a boy might who was badly in need of a haircut. After a light supper, she set out alone for the residence of Asbury Fuller and at the end of her journey found herself at the gateway of a somber edifice, which was apparently the only one in the block that was inhabited. On either side and across the way were vacant houses, lonesome and forbidding. Indeed, the residence of Asbury Fuller was itself scarcely less lonesome and forbidding. The grass of the plot before it was long and unkempt and heavily covered with mats of autumn leaves. The bricks of the front walk were sunken and uneven and the steps leading to the high piazza were deeply warped, as by pools of water that had lain and dried on their unswept surface through many seasons. The blinds hung awry and the paint on the great front doors was scaling, and altogether it was a faded magnificence, this of Asbury Fuller. She pulled the handle of the front-door bell and in response to its jangling announcement came a maid.

“Asbury Fuller?” said the maid, omitting the “Mr.” Miss Clarissa had affixed. “Go to the side door around to the right.”

Wondering if this were a lodging house and Asbury Fuller had a private entrance, or if it being his own house he had left word that callers should be sent to the side door to prevent the delivery of the razors being seen by others, Clarissa followed the walk through an avenue of dead syringa bushes and came to the side door. The same maid who had met her before, ushered her in and presently she found herself in a small apartment, almost a closet, standing at the back of Asbury Fuller. But though small, she remarked that the apartment was one of some magnificence, for on all sides was a quantity of burnished copper, binding the edges of a row of shelves and covering the whole top of a broad counter-like projection running along one side of the wall. Before this, Asbury Fuller was standing, assorting a number of cut-glass goblets of various sizes and putting them upon silver salvers, bottles of various colored wines being placed upon each salver with the goblets. He turned at her entrance and the look of sad and gloomy abstraction sitting upon his countenance instantly changed to one of relief and joy.

“At last, at last,” he exclaimed, in a deep tone which even more than his countenance betrayed his relief and joy. “It is almost too late and I thought the young woman had not attended to sending them, that she had failed me.”

“She would not fail you, sir,” said Clarissa, earnestly, allowing herself in the protection her assumed character gave her the pleasure of giving utterance to her feeling of regard for the young man. “She would not fail, sir, she could not fail you. Oh, you wrong her, if you think she could ever break her word to you.”

Asbury Fuller bent an inscrutable look upon Clarissa and then bidding her remain until his return, hastily left the room. But though he was gone, Clarissa sat gloating upon the mental picture of his manly beauty. He seemed taller than before, for the stoop he had worn in the afternoon had now departed and he stood erect and muscular in the suit of full evening dress that set off his lithe, soldierly form to such advantage. His garb was of an elegance such as Clarissa had never before beheld, and it was plain that the aristocracy affected certain adornments in the privacy of their homes which they did not caparison themselves with in public. Clarissa had seen dress suits in restaurants and in theaters, but never before had she seen a bottle-green dress coat with gold buttons and a velvet collar and a vest with broad longitudinal stripes of white and brown. In a brief space, Asbury Fuller returned, and glancing at his watch, he said:

“There is some time before the dinner party begins and I would like to talk with you. I am impressed by your apparent honesty and particularly by the air of devotion to duty that characterizes you. The latter I have more often remarked in women than in the more selfish sex to which we belong. We need a boy here. Wages, twenty dollars a month and keep.”

“Oh, sir, I should be pleased to come.”

“Your duties will commence at once. Owing to the fact that this old house has been empty for some time and the work of rehabilitating and refurnishing it is far from completed, you cannot at present have a room to yourself. You will sleep with John Klussmann, the hostler – ”

“Oh, sir, I cannot do that,” exclaimed Clarissa, starting up in alarm.

“John is a good boy and kicks very little in his sleep. But doubtless you object to the smell of horses.”

“Oh, sir, let me do what is needed this evening and go home and I will come back and work to-morrow and go home to-morrow night, and if by that time you find I can have a room by myself, perhaps I will come permanently.”

“I don’t smell of horses myself,” said Asbury Fuller, musingly, to which Clarissa making no response other than turning away her head to hide her blushes, he continued. “But two days will be enough. Indeed, to-night is the crucial point. I will not beat about the bush longer. I wish to attach you to my interests. I wish you to serve me to-night in the crisis of my career.”

“Oh, sir,” said Clarissa, in the protection that her assumed character gave her, allowing herself the privilege of speaking her real sentiments, “I am attached to your interests. Let me serve you. Command, and I will use my utmost endeavor to obey.”

Asbury Fuller looked at her in surprise. Carried away by her feelings and in the state of mental exaltation which the romance and mystery of the adventure had induced, she had made a half movement to kneel as she thus almost swore her fealty in solemn tones.

“Why are you attached to my interests?” asked Asbury Fuller, somewhat dryly.

Alas, Clarissa could not take advantage of the protection her assumed character gave her to tell the real reason. Only as a woman could she do that, only as a woman could she say and be believed, “Because I love you.”

“Why, some people are naturally leaders, naturally draw others to them – ”

“You cannot be a spy upon me, since no one knows who I am.”

“A spy!” cried Clarissa, in a voice whose sorrowful reproach gave convincing evidence of her ingenuousness.

“I wrong you, I wrong you,” said Asbury Fuller. “I will trust you. I will tell you what you are to do – ”

“Butler,” said a maid, poking her head in at the door, “it is time to come and give the finishing touches to the table. It is almost time for the dinner to be served,” and without ado, Asbury Fuller sprang out of the room.

A butler! A butler! Clarissa sat stunned. It was thus that her hero had turned out. Could she tell the other girls in the store with any degree of pride that she was keeping company with a butler? She had received a good literary education in the high school at Muncie, Indiana, and was a young woman of taste and refinement. Could she marry a butler? To be near her hero, she herself had just now been willing to undertake a menial position. But she had then imagined him to be a person of importance. This stage in her cogitations led her to the reflection that her feelings were unworthy of her. Had her regard for Asbury Fuller been all due to the belief that he was a person of importance, merely the worship of position, the selfish desire and hope – however faint – of rising to affluence and social dignity through him? Butler or no butler, Asbury Fuller was handsome, he was distinguished, his manner of speech was superior to that of any person she had ever known. Butler or no butler, she loved him. Just now she had hoped that he, rich and well placed, would overlook her poverty, and take her, friendless and obscure, for his bride. Could she give less than she had hoped he would give? And then as butler, her chances of winning him were so greatly increased.