STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A MILLION DOLLARS.
BY INGERSOLL LOCKWOOD.
Old New Yorkers may remember Dingee's famous Club House in lower GreeneStreet. From 1800 to 1850 it was the most fashionable gambling house inthe metropolis, its founder, Alphonse Dingee, having been the first tointroduce _roulette_ and _rouge et noir_ into the new world. It was in1850 or a little later that ill health obliged his son Cyrill to sellthe business out. He retired to his country seat at Bricksburg, quite apalatial residence for those days, where he died shortly after, leavinga round million dollars and one child, a daughter, Daisy. Spite of thefact that she was popularly known throughout the country as the"gambler's daughter," there were several respectable young men in theplace who would have been only too happy to administer an estate worth around million with Daisy thrown in for better or worse.
But Daisy Dingee knew what she wanted, and it was nothing more nor lessthan an alliance with the most aristocratic family in the country, towit: the Delurys, whose large white mansion at the other end of the townwas as tumble-down and shabby looking as Daisy's was neat, fresh, andwell kept. Miss Dingee, therefore, proceeded to throw herself at thehead of one Monmouth Delury, mentally and physically a colorless sort ofan individual, who, for want of sufficient intellect to make an honestliving, passed his time going to seed with the thousand or so acres ofland belonging to him and his maiden sisters, Hetty, Prudence, andMartha, three women who walked as stiff as they talked, although theynever were known to discuss any subject other than the Delury family.
When Daisy's proposition was made known to them they tried to faint, butwere too stiff to fall over, and were obliged to content themselves withgasping out:
"What! Daisy Dingee marry our brother, the head of the Delury family!"
But it was the first idea that had ever entered the brother's head, andhe clung to it with a parent's affection for his first born. In a fewmonths Mr. and Mrs. Monmouth Delury set out for Paris with thatproverbial speed with which Americans betake themselves to the Frenchcapital when occasion offers. They found it a much pleasanter place thanBricksburg. Delury improved rapidly and Daisy fell quite in love withhim, made her will in his favor, contracted the typhoid fever and died.
Whereupon the really disconsolate widower sent for his three sisters tojoin him. They had but one objection to going, that was to part companywith the dear old homestead, but they overcame it the day afterreceiving Monmouth's letter, which happened to be a Friday, and took theSaturday's steamer.
To confess the truth, the Delurys had been so land-poor that their sparearistocratic figures were rather the result of necessity thaninclination. Six months of Paris life under the benign protection ofDingee's round million made different women of them. It was wonderfulwhat a metamorphosis Parisian dressmakers and restaurateurs effected intheir figures. They became round and plump. They stopped talking aboutBricksburg, signed themselves the Misses Delury of New York, enrolledthemselves as patrons of art, gave elegant dinners, and in a very shorttime set up pretensions to being the leaders of the American colony.
But remorseless fate was at their heels. _Figaro_ unearthed the secretof old Dingee's million, and the Delurys suddenly found themselves thesensation of Paris, the butt of ridicule in the comic papers. Monmouthhad been in poor health for several months, and this killed him.
Dingee's million was now in the eye of the law divided up among histhree sisters, but fate willed it otherwise, for the following yearHetty, the eldest, died of Roman fever, and six months later Prudencefell a victim to rat poison in a small hotel at Grasse, City ofDelightful Odors, in the south of France, whither she had gone in searchof balmy air for her sister Martha, who had suddenly developed symptomsof consumption.
Left thus alone in the world with old Dingee's million and an incurableailment, Martha's only ambition was to reach Bricksburg and die in theold white Delury mansion. It seemed to her that its great spacious roomswould enable her to breathe more easily and to fight death off forpossibly another year.
But it was not to be. She got as far as Paris when old Dingee's millionagain changed hands, going this time by will to Martha's only relatives,twin brothers, John and William Winkletip, produce dealers in Washingtonstreet, New York.
The will was a peculiar one, as was to be expected:
I give, devise, and bequeath all the property popularly known as the "Dingee Million" to my cousins John and William Winkletip, produce dealers of New York, as joint tenants for their lives and the life of each of them, with remainder over to the eldest son of the survivor, his heirs and assigns forever; provided, that said remainder man shall be of full age at the time of his father's decease, and shall thereupon enter the ministry of the Methodist Episcopal Church and devote his life and the income of this estate to the encouragement of legislative enactment throughout the United States for the suppression of gambling and wager laying.
In default of such male heir, the Dingee million was to be divided upamong certain religious and eleemosynary institutions.
When the cablegram from Paris informing them of their extraordinary luckreached the Winkletip Brothers, they were down in the cellar of the oldtenement which served as their place of business, with their long jeancoats on, busily engaged in sorting onions. As the Winkletips were onlya little past fifty, and as strong as hickory knobs, their families werequite satisfied to get only a life estate in the Dingee million, for,barring accidents, the brothers had twenty-five or thirty years to liveyet.
True, Brother John had a son, Cyrus, who would soon be of age, but hewas a worthless wight, whose normal condition was alcoholic stupor,barely characterized with sufficient lucidity to enable him todistinguish rotten vegetables from sound.
"He will die years before his father," every one remarked, "and then thegambler's money will go where it ought to go."
There had been a fire next door to the Winkletips about the time thegood news had arrived from Paris; a huge warehouse had burned down,leaving a brick wall towering sixty feet above the old wooden tenementin which the brothers did business. They had given notice to theauthorities; but the inspectors had pronounced the wall perfectly safe.So the two brothers continued to come and go, in their best Sundayclothes, however, for they were only engaged in settling up the oldbusiness.
Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the huge wall fell with aterrific crash upon the wooden tenement, crushing it like an egg-shell.When the two brothers were taken out from the ruins, John was pronounceddead and a coroner's permit was given to remove him to a neighboringundertaker's establishment. William lived six hours, conscious to thelast and grateful to an all-wise Providence that his worthless nephewwould now be excluded from any control over the Dingee million.
John Winkletip was a grass widower, his wife, an Englishwoman, havingabandoned him and returned to England, and for many years he had madehis home with his only other child, a widowed daughter, Mrs. Timmins,who was openly opposed to many of her father's peculiar notions, as shetermed them, one of which was his strong advocacy of cremation; he beingone of the original stockholders and at the time of his death a directorof the Long Island Cremation Society.
Consequently Mrs. Timmins gave orders that immediately after thecoroner's inquest, her father's body should be removed to her residencein Harlem, but as the officers of the Cremation Society held thesolemnly executed direction and authorization of their late friend andassociate to incinerate his remains, they were advised by the counsel oftheir corporation that such an instrument would justify them in takingpossession of the remains at the very earliest moment possible andremoving it to the crematory.
Warned by the undertakers of Mrs. Timmins' threatened interference, theyresolved not to risk even the delay necessary to procure a burialcasket; in fact it would be a useless expense, anyway, and consequentlyJohn Winkletip began his last ride on earth lying in the cool depths ofthe undertaker's ice box.
As Mrs. Timmins's cab turned into Washington Stre
et she met a hearse,but not until she had reached the undertaker's establishment was hersuspicion transformed into certainty by being told that her father'sbody was already on its way to the crematory.
Mrs. Timmins was a long-headed woman. She knew the uncertainties of cabtransportation through the crowded streets below Canal, and dismissingher cab at the Chambers Street station of the Third Avenue Elevated, shewas soon speeding on her way to the Long Island City ferry.
This she reached just as a boat was leaving the slip. Misfortune numberone. When she finally reached the Long Island side, she threw herselfinto the carriage nearest at hand, crying out:
"To the crematory! Five dollars extra if you get me there in time!"
It was not many minutes before Mrs. Timmins became aware of the factthat the horse was next to worthless, and could scarcely be lashed intoa respectable trot. Mrs. Timmins was nearly frantic. Every minute herhead was thrust out of the window to urge the hackman to greater speed.There was but one consoling thought--the hearse itself might get blockedor might have missed a boat!
As again and again her head was thrust out of the carriage window herhair became disheveled, for she had removed her hat, and thesuperstitious Hibernian on the box was upon the point of abandoning hispost at sight of the wild and crazed look presented by Mrs. Timmins. Wasshe not some one's ghost, making this wild and mysterious ride?
But the promise of an extra five dollars kept the man at his post.
Suddenly a cry of joy escaped Mrs. Timmins's lips. The hearse was justahead of them; but its driver had the better horses, and half suspectingthat something was wrong, he whipped up vigorously and disappeared in acloud of dust. Mrs. Timmins's horse was now as wet as if he had beendipped into the river, and she expected every minute to see him giveout; but, strange to say, he had warmed up to his work, and now, inresponse to the driver's urging, broke into a run.
Again Mrs. Timmins caught a glimpse of the black coach of death in thedust clouds ahead of her. The race became every instant more exciting.It was a strange sight, and instinctively the farmers, in theirreturning vegetable wagons, drew aside to let them pass. Once more thehearse disappeared in the dust clouds. This was the last Mrs. Timminssaw of it until she drew up in front of the crematorium. There it stood,with its black doors thrown wide open. She had come too late! Herfather's body had already been thrust into the fiery furnace.
The antagonism of Winkletip's family to his views concerning thecremation of the dead was an open secret with every attache of thesociety, and the men in charge were determined that the society shouldcome out the winner. They were on the lookout for the body. Everything,to the minutest detail, was in readiness. The furnace had been pushed toits greatest destroying power, and hence was it that haste overcamedignity when the foam-flecked and panting horses of the undertaker drewup in front of the entrance of the crematory.
The ice-chest was snatched from the hearse, borne hurriedly into thefurnace-room, set upon the iron platform, wheeled into the very centerof the white flames, whose waving, curling, twisting tongues seemedreaching out to their fullest length, impatient for their prey, and theiron doors slammed shut with a loud, resounding clangor.
At that instant a woman, hatless and breathless, with disheveled hair,burst into the furnace-room.
"Hold! Hold!" she shrieked, and then her hands flew to her face, andstaggering backward and striking heavily against the wall, she sank,limp and lifeless, in a heap on the stone floor of the furnace-room.
But the two men in charge had neither eyes nor ears for Mrs. Timmins. Asthe doors closed they sprang to their posts of observation, in front ofthe two peep-holes, and stood watching the effect of the flames upon thehuge ice-chest.
Its wooden covering parted here and there with a loud crack, laying barethe metal case, from the seams of which burst fitful puffs of steam. Nowcame a sight so strange and curious that the two men held their breathas they gazed upon it! By the vaporizing of the water from the meltedice the flames were pushed back from the chest, and it lay there for aninstant, as if protected by some miraculous aura.
Then happened something which caused the men to reel and stagger as iftheir limbs were paralyzed by drink, and which painted their faces withas deep a pallor as death's own hand could have laid upon them.
From the furnace depths came forth a dull, muffled cry of "Help! Help!"
Making a desperate effort, the men tore open first the outer and thenthe inner doors of the fire chamber. As the air rushed in, the lid ofthe metal chest burst silently open. Again the cry of "Help!" rang out,and two hands quivered for an instant above the edge of the chest, thenwith a loud and defiant roar the flames closed in upon it, and began tolick it up ravenously. The doors were banged shut, and John Winkletiphad his way.
But the Dingee million seemed to draw back instinctively from the touchof the worthless Cy Winkletip.
With loud cries of joy, the various beneficiaries under Martha Delury'swill now discovered that Cyrus Winkletip was born on the 11th day ofAugust, and that as his father had departed this life on the 10th day ofAugust, the son was not of full age when his father died. But the lawput an end to this short-lived joy by making known one of its curiousbits of logic, which so often startle the layman.
It was this: The law takes no note of parts of a day, and therefore asCyrus Winkletip was of age on the first minute of his twenty-firstbirthday, he was also of age on the last minute of the daybefore--consequently on the first minute of the day before he wastwenty-one!
This gave the Dingee million to Cy Winkletip!
Under constant and stringent surveillance and tutelage, Cy Winkletipwas, after several years of as close application as was deemed safe inview of his weak mental condition, admitted to the ministry inaccordance with the provisions of Miss Delury's will.
At last the wicked Dingee million seemed safely launched upon its taskof undoing the wrong it had done; but Cy Winkletip's mind ran completelydown in five years and he died a wretched slavering, idiot.
Mrs. Timmins was inclined to warn off the Dingee million with a gestureof horror; but, yielding to the solicitation of her friends, sheconsented to take title in order that she might create a trust with itfor some good and noble purpose. To this end, by a last will andtestament she created and endowed the American Society for theSuppression of Gambling and Wager-laying, and then died.
The trustees at once began to erect the buildings called for, but beforethe society had had an opportunity to suppress a single gamingestablishment, the lawyers, at the prayer of Mrs. John Winkletip, Mrs.Timmin's mother, fell tooth and nail upon the trust, which was declaredtoo "vague, shadowy, and indefinite to be executed," and the Dingeemillion, its roundness now sadly shrunken, made its way across the oceanto Mrs. John Winkletip, of Clapham Common, London.
She died last year and with her the wanderings of the Dingee millioncame to an end. She willed it to trustees for building and maintaining aHospital for Stray Dogs and Homeless Cats, and those learned in the lawsay that the trust will stand.
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