The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  He listened, rapt. He waited till her last word had been uttered before he spoke. Then he answered her. “This is going to be a hard, hard thing on you, and were it done merely out of kindness and a sense of justice, I could not dare to accept your services. But so long as you have named a purely monetary consideration, I accept gladly. You think, do you, that only if we are married we can wage this fight successfully?”

  She nodded slowly. “I am afraid so — for two reasons. For one, in that way only can we pose before argus-eyed townspeople who would be quick to catch any discrepancy in the relationship between us if such discrepancy were allowed to exist. And we must have time in which to breathe — we must hold you until we can get writs to hold you — for, without such, they will have you back in here before we can say Jack Robinson. Secondly, a wife is, after all, in America, her husband’s legal guardian with respect to insanity petitions, and her claims in a hearing of that nature rank higher than any outside party, such as the State itself, claiming guardianship ad litem, as it is termed. You are not insane in Indiana, for you have not been so declared there. But if this case goes against us, you will be — and you will be put into an Indiana asylum next time. And I — well — that would mean that I could never marry again so long as I lived, for one cannot get a divorce from a partner who is mentally incapable. I — I am quite frank, you see.” She paused. “And as to whether or no after that ceremony, I shall receive from you the consideration that a woman should have — I dare not think.”

  He looked her squarely in the face. “Well,” he said stolidly, “you are in a way to learn something. Why, Anne, I — ” He paused. “But — I accept your offer. Now will you tell me your immediate plans — and when I shall see you again?”

  “I shall be here — we will make it exactly a week from to-day. And next time I come I shall have in my bosom a tool — or tools. Now what kind of tool shall it be?”

  “Bring a hacksaw,” he said hurriedly. “A twelve-inch hacksaw. You can get it at any hardware store. Get twelve blades, and make very sure that the blades fit before you take them. And bring also a small piece of soap, for all we have here is liquid soap, and I shall need some of the other kind. And also a tiny box of lamp black — powdered carbon. That is all.”

  “And on the day I next come,” she said, “I will give you all the details I shall work out this coming week. I am living just now on Chicago’s south side. My first move will be to find an Indiana town and perhaps to secure a marriage licence for one Jonathan Doe, your actual legal name at present, and Anne Holliston. Next, still some other town in Indiana from which we can wage our legal battle.” She rose. “Oh, I wonder,” she said, her pale face looking troubledly at him, “if I am making a mistake. I wonder — I wonder?”

  “Don’t wonder,” he said, rising too. “Don’t wonder. You are making no mistake. And don’t fail me — please. Don’t change your mind,” he explained. “You are my only hope.”

  She shook her head. “I dare not change my mind. For I must — I must have nine hundred dollars. I must have it. I must go through with this thing. Indeed, I would go through even worse than this to help my poor little sister. I will also have with me a note for nine hundred dollars — which you may sign. That is all. Good-bye,” She offered her hand. And Middleton took it and bowed.

  Joe Blake came rapidly up the ward and let her out. Jangling his keys he left the locked door, with a single curious sidewise glance at Jerry Middleton. But he refrained from making any comment, or asking any questions.

  As for Middleton, however, he made his way at once to the room of Pop Claggett, who received all the Chicago newspapers, and who, after painstakingly reading them, meticulously saved them all — at least till the attendants carried off his store at the end of every month. The old man was busy working away at his Universal Philosophy, and, pencil in hand, he turned rheumy eyes on his young caller.

  “Pop,” Middleton asked without any preliminaries, “may I look over your newspapers for the month of October?” He pointed at the neat stock under the bed.

  “Jes’ he’p yo’se’f, young feller. Any time you all wants to look at them ‘ere papers, jes’ you come right in. Don’t take none of ‘em with you, Johnny.” And he bent back to his task.

  The first thing Jerry Middleton did was to withdraw the papers, all of them, both morning and evening, of October 10, the day following the night on which he had been arrested at St. Andrew’s Church. He ran carefully through the pages of each of them. It was as he had just suspected. There was not a word in any of the four about the affair — not so much as an inconspicuous “stick” in 5-point type at the bottom of a column. But from each and every one there stared up at him a huge, full-page advertisement of Lotsapep — a flare of publicity the like of which he had never seen in those previous issues of the papers in which he had vainly read the help-wanted ads. He proceeded with his examination, taking up the papers of the succeeding day — and then on up to the very day on which he had been committed to Birkdale, but not a line, not a “stick,” not a mention was to be found.

  It was all very plain. There had been no story in Chicago for the reason that rich advertising contracts had killed completely any publicity which involved at all the honoured name of the Middleton estate and the Middleton heir. He had been put away expeditiously. The story had been so bizarre that although killed in Chicago, it had nevertheless gone out on the news wires to the other cities. And there, with its pictures and unsuppressed details, it had reached the one being — the needle in the haystack — whom Jerry Middleton would have spent a fortune to reach.

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE PRECIOUS TOOL

  THE seven days before Anne Holliston came again to Birkdale passed like an eternity to Jerry Middleton.

  Should he successfully make his escape, should this midnight marriage come about, should he be acquitted in a bitterly contested sanity hearing, could he then win her over, could he convince her that the love that he offered her was not that mistaken sort of emotion which he had tried to give Pamela Martindale — and failed? If not, if it were ordained that Anne Holliston’s heart was never to beat for Jerry Middleton, he told himself grimly that the niggardly dole which was his from his father’s estate should be hers, to the last penny, for the rest of her life.

  Hope is a tremendous tonic, as he was to find on the morning of the day when she was to come again. Howard Hyde, a copy of the North American Review in hand, spoke to him off in one corner.

  “You have a sparkle in your eye, old boy, and a colour to your cheek that I have never seen before. What became of all your desires for getting out of here? Have you thrown ‘em overboard?”

  “No,” said Middleton. “I haven’t, Howard. But everything comes in time.” He looked the other over. A sudden idea had come to him. “I want to talk to you, Howard, this afternoon. Will you remain out of the card-games after the noon-time meal?”

  “Gladly,” the other said. And regarding Middleton a bit curiously, he went back to the article he was reading.

  Came noontime and no girl. Jerry Middleton began to feel vaguely uneasy. Had she gone to his enemies, by any chance, and got the precious nine hundred dollars from them?

  But shortly after the noon meal of boiled beef and beets, bread, and corn syrup, a ring sounded at the front door of the ward and she was again admitted by Joe Blake. With heart beating wildly, he went up the ward, and as Blake went on back to his own little office, he sat down on the bench beside her. He longed to take her in his arms, to hold her to him as he would a child, but he looked down at himself and shamefacedly he realised that he was as yet unproven — and clad in coarse prison-made garments as well. He spoke.

  “I was afraid that you were not coming,” were his first words to her. “I began to feel like a caged tiger.”

  She looked at him gravely. “But I said I would be here,” was her quiet response. “And I am here — and all prepared as well.”

  There was a pause between them and then she
spoke. Her tones were appreciably lowered. “Now is there anybody within hearing distance?”

  He shook his head. “Nobody. The rule here is that all doors of all rooms must be left open at all times, day or night, and as I came up the ward nobody was in any room within a hundred feet of this bench. We can talk freely.”

  “Then I will speak — and quickly. Now so long as — as I do not know the truth of your identity and of this man outside, I shall — well — I shall call you Jonathan. Now, Jonathan, the plan which I have worked out for you is as follows: I have, of course, secured for you the hacksaw, and the twelve blades. The blades are tied to it. The saw and blades are wound with newspaper strips. The package is in my bosom. The cake of soap and the packet of lamp-black are in my handbag here. The moment we get an opportunity I will transfer all these articles to you. But now as to the plan of escape itself. In the first place, I have examined the country around here more than carefully. That is the reason, in fact, why I did not get here this morning. I find there is a railroad about a quarter of a mile to the south of the institution. Did you know that?”

  “Yes,” he nodded. “We can hear the trains whistle as they go by, and on damp days we can see the smoke from the locomotives trailing in the air.”

  “Well,” she said, “about the length of two city blocks east along that railroad right-of-way, and directly over it, is a little wooden bridge, above which in turn is a steel framework carrying a block signal. This same bridge I speak of is part of a secluded road which eventually runs into one of the main automobile highways of Illinois. And it is on that bridge where I will be waiting with the old Ford car, which luckily I can drive. This car I have already arranged to rent, for the sum of ten dollars for the night, but will have to deposit as security for its return the same hundred dollars with which we are going to wage your legal battle. This means that the car will have to be returned the next day after your escape. But that is a detail to work out later.” She paused. “Now how long will it take you to saw those bars?”

  “I can saw them in one hour,” he said optimistically. “I will have all the opportunity in the world, because the night-watch sits at the other end of the ward. In one hour’s work to-night I can have two bars sawed completely through, the eight ribbed projections above the cuts nicked, and every notch stuffed with soap and blackened to avoid detection.”

  “Very well then,” she said. “At midnight to-morrow night I will be over at one side of the road next that bridge which I just described, with my lights out. I will have to assume that you will come through successfully here — at your end. Now as to the marriage between us, without which our otherwise well-laid plans may all go to nought.” She paused. “By reading the Chicago papers, I have secured the name and location of a minister who lives just over the Indiana State line on the main automobile highway which goes into that State from this point in Illinois. He is called Indiana’s ‘marrying parson,’ due to the fact that he marries so many elopers from Chicago. He is clerk of the county court as well as minister of his own parish, and can therefore issue his own marriage licences. The quicker after getting into Indiana that we become man and wife the better for this plan of ours, in case some unforeseen complication takes place. We should be crossing the Indiana line at about three o’clock in the morning. As for the name which you will be married under, we will select that of Jonathan Doe, which makes the marriage absolutely legal since an Illinois court, whether rightfully or wrongly, has nevertheless bestowed that name upon you. The licence, therefore, will be issued to J. Doe and Anne Holliston. Once out of the minister’s cottage, we will speed northward in Indiana just as fast as we can.”

  “To — where?” asked Middleton breathlessly.

  “I have scoured Indiana northward to bring us sufficiently far from the Indiana-Illinois State line so that by no chance could you be kidnapped by your enemies during the trial, as was Harry Thaw, and rushed back into Illinois from which you could be immediately put back into Birkdale. I have, in fact, gone as far north almost as Michigan, to a town on the lake called Kenburyport — an iron smelting town which gets its iron ore direct from Lake Superior. There is a boarding-house there run by a Mrs. Rothappel, a German woman. And in this boarding-house I have already engaged a room, and have been living there for five days under the name of Mrs. Alice Winters. I have told the landlady that I expect my husband to join me very shortly. And so, when we come in together ultimately, our arrival in this way will not be unexpected. Is everything clear?”

  He ruminated. “Rothappel? That means red apple in German. And the town is Kenburyport, Indiana?”

  She nodded. “On the Michigan Central Railroad out of Chicago or the Chicago and East Shore Suburban Electric.”

  He registered this data carefully in his mind. Whereupon she spoke again.

  “I think, then, Jonathan, that this settles about everything. I will be at the right spot at the right time. And I shall assume that you will come out satisfactorily at your end. I shall not dare to visit you here again, for they will be suspicious. In fact, I shall have to tell them downstairs when I leave to-day that my letter proved unfruitful and that I am not in a position to identify you as I thought I was. That means the end of any more visits to you. She paused. “And now for one important thing,” She opened her handbag and took from it a fountain pen and a slip of paper. She handed them to Middleton. “There — there is the note.”

  He read it. It was a simple promissory note for nine hundred dollars, payable in twelve monthly instalments of seventy-five dollars each. He took the pen from her fingers. He signed it: “Jerome Herbert Middleton.” He handed it back to her together with the pen. “There — it is signed. For your own sake I hope you discover that it is Jerome Herbert Middleton himself who signed it.”

  “I hope so,” she sighed. “God knows I hope so.”

  Folding the note carefully up, she put it away in one of the smaller compartments of her handbag. Then she turned to him troubledly. “And now how am I going to get the saw and the other two small packets into your possession?”

  He pondered a moment. He looked down the ward. Blake was in his office, and hence not in sight. Only a couple of inmates, well back of the forty-foot dividing line between visitors and inmates, were looking curiously and longingly down toward the “visitor.” He spoke hurriedly. “I will arise and step in front of you as though to look at something in your purse which you are showing to me. At that moment — pass them quickly to me.”

  She nodded. He performed exactly the manœuvre he had described. Like a flash she withdrew from her bosom the saw to which was tied the package of blades, and all of which were wrapped in strips of newspapers. The faint perfume of her delicate body came to his nostrils as she withdrew it. He passed the thin package beneath his coat, where he inserted it beneath his left arm. She quickly handed him the tiny packets of soap and lampblack respectively, and he thrust them hastily in his side coat pocket. Then he dropped back to his position on the bench once more. Blake was still out of sight.

  The girl now looked at a tiny cheap watch ticking away on her wrist. “I must go, Jonathan.” She held out her finger-tips to him. He took them gingerly. She looked into his eyes with her own unfathomable eyes of brown. “Jonathan Doe, before to-morrow night is past we will be husband and wife. No human being, even myself, can tell at this moment whether you are insane or the innocent victim of a conspiracy. Yet, whichever it is, I hope — I hope — I trust that you will do the honourable thing by me — at least until this mystery is threshed out.”

  He took both of her little hands in his. She did not now draw them away. “Little Anne Holliston,” he said, “I promise you, I shall show you that even a lunatic may have a sense of honour and obligation.”

  A grateful look was her only reply. She drew her hands gently from his. “And now I must go. Good-bye.”

  She rose quickly. Blake, now standing in the door of his office, saw her and came quickly up the ward. “Patient quite quiet, ma’am?”
he asked.

  “Quite so,” she replied. “Mr. Doe is a thorough gentleman.” She nodded her head to the door, Blake unlocked it and let her out, and a moment later Middleton, left arm pressed tightly against his side, was trotting down the ward at Blake’s heels. At the washroom, however, he dropped off. There was no one within it. He quickly unsheathed a safety pin which he had won the previous day in one of those moneyless — but not stakeless! — card games, and unbuttoning his faded shirt inserted the saw inside and hooked it, by the pin, to his underwear, under his left arm as before. And there he proceeded to wear it for the rest of the afternoon.

  For a long time that afternoon he stood by the window pondering over a certain weighty and perplexing problem. But at length he came to a definite decision. And, reaching it, he made his way at once to where Howard Hyde was sitting, ever reading but ever willing to look up from his book. “Howard,” he said, “I would like to speak to you alone.”

  Hyde accompanied him clear to his own room, where, for want of a seat, the two men sat down on the window-sill. And Middleton spoke that which was on his mind.