The Victorian Villains Megapack

by Arthur Morrison

  Wilkins scrambled heavily into his berth, and the conductor struck a match and turned on the Pintsch light. Only one bed was occupied, and that by the fat man in the pajamas. On the sofa was an elegant alligator-skin bag disclosing a row of massive silver-topped bottles. A tall silk hat and Inverness coat hung from a hook, and a suit of evening clothes, as well as a business suit of fustian, were neatly folded and lying on the upper berth.

  At this vision of respectability both McGinnis and the conductor recoiled, glancing doubtfully at one another. Wilkins saw his advantage.

  “May I hinquire,” remarked he, with dignity, “wot you mean by these hactions? W’y am I thus disturbed in the middle of the night? It is houtrageous!”

  “Very sorry, sir,” replied the conductor. “The fact is, we thought two people, suspicious characters, had taken this room together, and this officer here”—pointing to McGinnis—“had orders to arrest one of them.”

  Wilkins swelled with indignation.

  “Suspicious characters! Two people! Look ’ere, conductor, I’ll ’ave you to hunderstand that I will not tolerate such a performance. I am Mr. McAllister, of the Colophon Club, New York, and I am hon my way to hattend the wedding of Mr. Frederick Cabot in Boston, tomorrow. I am to be ’is best man. Can I give you any further hinformation?”

  The conductor, who had noticed the initials “McA” on the silver bottle heads, and the same stamped upon the bag, stammered something in the nature of an apology.

  “Say, Cap.,” whispered McGinnis, “we’ve got him wrong, I guess. This feller ain’t no burglar. Anywan can see he’s a swell, all right. Leave him alone.”

  “Very sorry to have disturbed you,” apologized the conductor humbly, putting out the light and closing the door.

  “That nigger must be nutty,” he added to the detective. “By Joshua! Perhaps he’s got away with some of my stuff!”

  “Look here, William, what’s the matter with you? Have you been swipin’ my whisky. There ain’t two men in that drawin’-room at all—just one—a swell,” hollered the conductor as they reached the platform.

  “Fo’ de Lawd, Cap’n, I ain’t teched yo’ whisky,” cried William in terror. “I swear dey was two of ’em, ’n’ de udder was in disguise. It was de fines’ disguise I eber saw!” he added reminiscently.

  “Aw, what yer givin’ us!” exclaimed McGinnis, entirely out of patience. “What kind av a disguise was he in?”

  “Dat’s what I axed him,” explained William, edging toward the rim of the circle. “I done ax him right away what character he done represent. He had on silk stockin’s, an’ a colored deglishay shirt, an’ a belt an’ moccasons, an’ a sword an’——”

  “A sword!” yelled McGinnis, making a jump in William’s direction. “I’ll break yer black head for ye!”

  “Hold on!” cried the conductor, who had disappeared into the car and had emerged again with a bottle in his hand. “The stuff’s here.”

  “I tell ye the coon is drunk!” shouted the detective in angry tones. “He can’t make small av me!”

  “I done tole you the trufe,” continued William from a safe distance, his teeth and eyeballs shining in the moonlight.

  “Well, where did he go?” asked the conductor. “Did you put him in the drawin’-room?”

  “I seen his ticket,” replied William, “an’ he said he wanted to smoke, so he went into the Benvolio, the car behin’.”

  “Car behind!” cried McGinnis. “There ain’t no car behind. This here is the last car.”

  “Sure,” said the conductor, with a laugh; “we dropped the Benvolio at Selma Junction for repairs. Say, McGinnis, you better have that drink!”

  IV

  McAllister was awakened by a sense of chill. The compartment was dark, save for the pale light of the moon hanging low over what seemed to be water and the masts of ships, which stole in and picked out sharply the silver buckles on his shoes and the buttons of his doublet. There was no motion, no sound. The train was apparently waiting somewhere, but McAllister could not hear the engine. He put on his ulster and stepped to the door of the car. All the lights had been extinguished and he could hear neither the sound of heavy breathing nor the other customary evidences of the innocent rest of the human animal. He looked across the platform for his own car and found that the train had totally disappeared. The Benvolio was stationary—side-tracked, evidently, on the outskirts of a town, not far from some wharves.

  “Jiminy!” thought McAllister, looking at his uncheerful surroundings and his picturesque, if somewhat cool, costume.

  For a moment his mental processes refused to answer the heavy draught upon them. Then he turned up his coat-collar, stepped out upon the platform, and lit a cigar. By the light of the match he looked at his watch and saw that it was four o’clock. Overhead the sky glowed with thousands of twinkling stars, and the moon, just touching the sea, made a limpid path of light across the water. At the docks silent ships lay fast asleep. A mile away a clock struck four, intensifying the stillness. It was very beautiful, but very cold, and McAllister shivered as he thought of Wilkins, and Freddy Cabot, and the wedding at twelve o’clock. So far as he knew he might be just outside of Boston—Quincy, or somewhere—yet, somehow, the moon didn’t look as if it were at Quincy.

  He jumped down and started along the track. His feet stung as they struck the cinder. His whole body was asleep. It was easy enough to walk in the direction in which the clock had sounded, and this he did. The rails followed the shore for about a hundred yards and then joined the main line. Presently he came in sight of a depot. Every now and then his sword would get between his legs, and this caused him so much annoyance that he took it off and carried it. It was queer how uncomfortable the old style of shoe was when used for walking on a railroad track. His ruffle, too, proved a confounded nuisance, almost preventing a satisfactory adjustment of coat-collar. Finally he untied it and put it in the pocket of his ulster. The cap was not so bad.

  The depot had inspired the clubman with distinct hope, but as he approached, it appeared as dark and tenantless as the car behind him. It was impossible to read the name of the station owing to the fact that the sign was too high up for the light of a match to reach it. It was clear that there was nothing to do but to wait for the dawn, and he settled himself in a corner near the express office and tried to forget his discomfort.

  He had less time to wait than he had expected. Soon a great clattering of hoofs caused him to climb stiffly to his feet again. Three farmers’ wagons, each drawn by a pair of heavy horses, backed in against the platform, and their drivers, throwing down the reins, leaped to the ground. All were smoking pipes and chaffing one another loudly. Then they began to unload huge cans of milk. This looked encouraging. If they were bringing milk at this hour there must be a train—going somewhere. It didn’t matter where to McAllister, if only he could get warm. Presently a faint humming came along the rails, which steadily increased in volume until the approaching train could be distinctly heard.

  “Pretty nigh on time,” commented the nearest farmer.

  McAllister stepped forward, sword in hand. The farmer involuntarily drew back.

  “Wall, I swan!” he remarked, removing his pipe.

  “Do you mind telling me,” inquired our friend, “what place this is and where this train goes to?”

  “I reckon not,” replied the other. “This is Selma Junction, and this here train is due in New York at five. Who be you?”

  “Well,” answered McAllister, “I’m just an humble citizen of New York, forced by circumstances to return to the city as soon as possible.”

  “Reckon you’re one o’ them play-actors, bean’t ye?”

  “You’ve got it,” returned McAllister. “Fact is, I’ve just been playing Henry VIII—on the road.”

  “I’ve heard tell on’t,” commented the rustic. “But I ain’t never seen it. Shakespea
re, ain’t it?”

  “Yes, Shakespeare,” admitted the clubman.

  At this moment the milk-train roared in and the teamsters began passing up their cans. There were no passenger coaches—nothing but freight-cars and a caboose. Toward this our friend made his way. There did not seem to be any conductor, and, without making inquiries, McAllister climbed upon the platform and pushed open the door. If warmth was what he desired he soon found it. The end of the car was roughly fitted with half a dozen bunks, two boxes which served for chairs, and some spittoons. A small cast-iron stove glowed red-hot, but while the place was odoriferous, its temperature was grateful to the shivering McAllister. The car was empty save for a gigantic Irishman sitting fast asleep in the farther corner.

  Our hero laid down his sword, threw off his ulster, and hung his cap upon an adjacent hook. In a moment or two the train started again. Still no one came into the caboose. Now daylight began to filter in through the grimy windows. The sun jumped suddenly from behind a ridge and shot a beam into the face of the sleeper at the other end of the car. Slowly he awoke, yawned, rubbed his eyes, and, catching the glint of silver buttons, gazed stupidly in McAllister’s direction. The random glance gradually gave place to a stare of intense amazement. He wrinkled his brows, and leaned forward, scrutinizing with care every detail of McAllister’s make-up. The train stopped for an instant and a burly brakeman banged open the door and stepped inside. He, too, hung fire, as it were, at the sight of Henry VIII. Then he broke into a loud laugh.

  “Who in thunder are you?”

  Before McAllister could reply McGinnis, with a comprehensive smile, made answer:

  “Shure, ’tis only a prisoner I’m after takin’ back to the city!”

  * * * *

  “Mr. McAllister,” remarked Conville, two hours later, as the three of them sat in the visitors’ room at the club, “I hope you won’t say anything about this. You see, I had no business to put a kid like Ebstein on the job, but I was clean knocked out and had to snatch some sleep. I suppose he thought he was doin’ a big thing when he nailed you for a burglar. But, after all, the only thing that saved Welch was your fallin’ asleep in the Benvolio.”

  “My dear Baron,” sympathetically replied McAllister, who had once more resumed his ordinary attire, “why attribute to chance what is in fact due to intellect? No, I won’t mention our adventure, and if our friend McGinnis—”

  “Oh, McGinnis’ll keep his head shut, all right, you bet!” interrupted Barney. “But say, Mr. McAllister, on the level, you’re too good for us. Why don’t you chuck this game and come in out of the rain? You’ll be up against it in the end. Help us to land this feller!”

  McAllister took a long pull at his cigar and half-closed his eyes. There was a quizzical look around his mouth that Conville had never seen there before.

  “Perhaps I will,” said he softly. “Perhaps I will.”

  “Good!” shouted the Baron; “put it there! Now, if you get anything, tip us off. You can always catch me at 3100 Spring.”

  “Well,” replied the clubman, “don’t forget to drop in here, if you happen to be going by. Some time, on a rainy day perhaps, you might want a nip of something warm.”

  But to this the Baron did not respond.

  A plunge in the tank and a comfortable smoke almost restored McAllister’s customary equanimity. Weddings were a bore, anyway. Then he called for a telegraph blank and sent the following:

  Was unavoidably detained. Terribly disappointed. If necessary, use Wilkins.

  McA.

  To which, about noon-time, he received the following reply:

  Don’t understand. Wilkins arrived, left clothes and departed. You must have mixed your dates. Wedding tomorrow.

  F. C.

  THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL’S TRUNK, by Arthur Train

  Taken from McAllister and His Double (1905).

  I

  McAllister was in the tank. His puffing and blowing as he dove and tumbled like a contented, rubicund porpoise, reverberated loudly among the marble pillars of the bath at the club. It was all part of a carefully adjusted and as rigorously followed regimen, for McAllister was a thorough believer in exercise (provided it was moderate), and took it regularly, averring that a fellow couldn’t expect to eat and drink as much as he naturally wanted to unless he kept in some sort of condition, and if he didn’t he would simply get off his peck, that was all. Hence “Chubby” arose regularly at nine-thirty, and wrapping himself in a padded Japanese silk dressing-gown, descended to the tank, where he dove six times and swam around twice, after which he weighed himself and had Tim rub him down. Tim felt a high degree of solicitude for all this procedure, since he was a personal discovery of McAllister’s, and owed his present exalted position entirely to the clubman’s interest, for the latter had found him at Coney Island earning his daily bread by diving, in the presence of countless multitudes, into a six-foot glass tank, where he seated himself upon the bottom and nonchalantly consumed a banana. McAllister’s delight and enthusiasm at this elevating spectacle had been boundless.

  “Wish I could do any one thing as well as that feller dives down and eats that banana!” he had confided to his friend Wainwright. “Sometimes I feel as if my life had been wasted!” The upshot of the whole matter was that Tim had been forthwith engaged as rubber and swimming teacher at the club.

  McAllister had just taken his fifth plunge, and was floating lazily toward the steps, when Tim appeared at the door leading into the dressing-rooms and announced that a party wanted to speak to him on the phone, the Lady somebody, evidently a very cantankerous old person, who was in the devil of a hurry, and wouldn’t stand no waitin’.

  The clubman turned over, sputtered, touched bottom, and arose dripping to his feet. The “old person” on the wire was clearly his aunt, Lady Lyndhurst, and he knew very much better than to irritate her when she was in one of her tantrums. Still, he couldn’t imagine what she wanted with him at that hour of the morning. She’d been placid enough the evening before when he’d left her after the opera. But ever since she had married Lord Lyndhurst for her second husband ten years before she’d been getting more and more dictatorial.

  “Tell her I’m in this beastly tank; awful sorry I can’t speak with her myself, don’cher know, and find out what she wants. And Tim—handle her gently—it’s my aunt.”

  Tim grinned and winked a comprehending eye. As McAllister hurried into his bath-robe and slippers he wondered more and more why she had rung him up so early. He had intended calling on her after breakfast, any way, but “after breakfast” to McAllister meant in the neighborhood of twelve o’clock, for the meal was always carefully ordered the evening before for half-past ten the next morning, after which came the paper and a long, light Casadora, crop of ’97, which McAllister had bought up entire. Something must be up—that was certain. He could imagine her in her wrapper and curl-papers holding converse with Tim over the wire. The language of his protégé might well assist in the process for which the curl-papers were required. There was nobody in the world, in McAllister’s opinion, so queer as his aunt, except his aunt’s husband. The latter was a stout, beefy nobleman of sixty-five, with a walrus-like countenance, an implicit faith in the perfection of British institutions, and about enough intelligence to drive a watering-cart. He had been rewarded for his unswerving fidelity to party with the post of Governor-General at a small group of islands somewhere near the equator, and had assumed his duties solemnly and ponderously, establishing the Bertillon system of measurements for the seven criminals which his islands supported, and producing quarterly monographs on the flora, fauna, and conchology of his dominion. Just now they were en route for England (via Quebec, of course), and were stopping at the Waldorf.

  Tim presently reappeared.

  “She says you’ve got to hike right down to the hotel as fast as you can. She’s terrible upset. My, ain’t she a tiger?”

&
nbsp; “But what’s the bloomin’ row?” exclaimed McAllister.

  Tim looked round cautiously and lowered his voice.

  “The Lyndhurst Jewels has been stole!” said he.

  II

  The Lyndhurst Jewels stolen! No wonder Aunt Sophia had seemed peevish, for they were the treasured heirlooms of her husband’s family, cherished and guarded by her with anxious eye. McAllister had always said the old man was an ass to go lugging ’em off down among the mangoes and land-crabs, but the Governor-General liked to have his lady appear in style at Government House, and took much innocent pleasure in astonishing the natives by the splendor of her adornment. The jewelry, however, was the source of unending annoyance to himself, Sophia, and everybody else, for it was always getting lost, and burglar scares occurred with regularity at the islands. It had been still intact, however, on their arrival in New York.

  The clubman found his uncle and aunt sitting dejectedly at the breakfast-table in the Diplomatic Suite.

  The atmosphere of gloom struck a cold chill to our friend’s centre of vivacity. There were also evidences of a domestic misunderstanding. His aunt fidgeted nervously, and his uncle evaded McAllister’s eye as they responded half-heartedly to his cheerful salutation. That the matter was serious was obvious. Clearly this time the jewels must be really gone. In addition, both the Governor-General and his lady kept looking over their shoulders fearfully, as if dreading the momentary assault of some assassin. McAllister inquired what the jolly mess was, incidentally suggesting that their hurry-call had deprived him of any attempt at breakfast. His hint, however, fell on barren ground.

  “That fool Morton has packed all the jewelry in the big Vuitton!” exclaimed his uncle, nervously jabbing his spoon into a grape-fruit. “To say the least, it was excessively careless of him, for he knows perfectly well that we always carry it in the morocco hand-bag, and never allow it out of our sight.” The Governor-General paused, and took a sip of coffee.

  “Well,” said McAllister, rather impatiently, “why don’t you have him unpack it, then?” He couldn’t for the life of him see why they made such a row about a thing of that sort. It was clear enough that they were both more than half mad.