The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Did you marry this woman on the bridge?” he suddenly asked toward his subject.

  “No,” responded Middleton simply, as he thought back on that great bulky negro girl with her shiny black face and thick lips.

  “But you had deserted from the army, and you now went with her?”

  “She was dark. Her hair was dark.”

  “So you have said. But that is beside the point. Think. What connection is there now in your mind with the picture of two hands joined together? For you conveyed to us a while ago that you had had a dream in which this girl’s hand and yours were joined together. What did this mean? Marriage? Or what?”

  “Her mule — was named Leo.”

  “No — I did not ask you that. Well — in what university then, did you study astronomy?”

  “Astronomy is the science of the stars.”

  “Yes — stars. Where did you study the stars? In what classroom did you study the stars?”

  “In what classroom? In no classroom. Under the skies. For hours and hours.” Which was as truthful a thing as Jerry Middleton had uttered that last half-hour, remembering as he did so poignantly how he had lain on his back night after night in the trenches of Flanders staring up for hours at those blinking, twinkling points, wondering whether he were ever going to see Melbourne again. He heard von Zero’s comment on his answer.

  “For hours and hours, eh? Well, that settles another point. Only a professional astronomer studies the heavens for hours and hours. Or else a young man of such well-to-do parentage that they could provide for him a telescope or an observatory for his own use.”

  Middleton heard the click of a watch. Evidently the Hen-Doctor was glancing at the passage of time. Then the latter spoke, but in the direction of his audience.

  “Well — the marriage or illicit alliance with this dark-eyed girl in France is a deep-rooted complex of some sort, and the patient will be extremely exhausted if we try to dig too deeply on the first hypnosis.” His voice fell on Middleton’s ears again.

  “Spottiswood — or Spottsman — whatever your name is, who pursued you as you fled with that girl on the mule named Leo?”

  Middleton sighed. And an experience in the Newcastle steel mills on which he could stand cross-examining all day, if necessary, came suddenly to him. He seized it contentedly.

  “I hear from out of my sleep a question. A question on my hurling — my hurling a stone.”

  “Yes,” responded von Zero greedily. “That is just what we want. You recall then, do you, some intentions you have, when awake, to use the law to dethrone a certain individual outside?”

  “The law? Blackstone?”

  “Exactly. Blackstone. Splendid.” The sound of von Zero’s hands rubbing together penetrated to Middleton’s ear-drums.

  So now for that experience in the Newcastle steel mills which should definitely exclude any more dangerous hypotheses as to his plans with respect to that double in Chicago. He spoke slowly. “I worked. I worked in steel mills. One day my overalls were missing. Mine were clean overalls. I found only dirty ones. I looked up. I saw another worker. He was in my overalls. I picked up a piece of coal. I hurled it at him. He relinquished my property. He relinquished it quickly.”

  Poor Herr Doctor Meister-Professor von Zero! In a few simple words had been demolished his beautiful hypothesis about Blackstone, and the projected employment by his subject of Sir William’s famous work on jurisprudence. The Austrian’s face must have fallen, judging by the tone of his voice.

  “Where did you work? Eh? Where was this place in which you wore overalls?”

  “Steel mills.”

  “I asked you where was it?

  “Where the furnaces belch flames.”

  “Pah! Everywhere they belch flames. In Essen, Germany; in Krieh, Austria; in Vaneau, France; in Pittsburg, United States. You worked in the mills of Pittsburg, eh?”

  In view of the fact that Newcastle, New South Wales, was known as “the Pittsburg of Australia,” and that the name of Andrew Carnegie, the famous old American king of the industry, was as well known there as Australia’s own leading lights, Jerry Middleton had no trouble in replying — at least indirectly.

  “I worked in — the Pittsburg.”

  “You worked in Pittsburg?”

  “I worked in the Pittsburg.”

  Von Zero sighed. It was plain who, as between master and subject, was becoming exhausted. He turned to the audience.

  “I consider it,” he said grumpily, “impracticable to proceed further to-day, since the patient is exhausted, I am certain. In the meantime I shall study his case, and in the next séance I hope to tear from him his entire past by trying to induce in him a deeper sleep, one in which his inhibitions will be more completely buried. Under such a hypnosis we may hope to garner in more of the details of his past life.”

  He was silent for a moment, and then he began.

  “We can for the present safely assume that he is a Canadian who has been in this country for some years, and that he was in France as a soldier with either the American or Canadian forces. His name is probably Spottiswood or some name similar to that, by which he would familiarly termed ‘Spot’ by someone close to him. We know that he deserted in France, was captured and locked up, but that he escaped and fled on a mule with a girl with brown eyes. To go according to the time sequence of his dream, which is quite feasible, we may assume that, after he returned to civil life in America he reluctantly entered the steel-making industry at Pittsburg, in your State of Pennsylvania, and I say reluctantly for our analysis has brought out that he is a young man who has either studied astronomy or has been a minor instructor in that science, or whose parents have at some time developed his inclinations that way by donating to him an observatory and a telescope. It is very likely that this conflict between his astronomical inclinations and the actual surroundings of his work is the thing which eventually drove him restlessly into a change of occupations such as applying for the position of valet in Chicago, and then still later of stealing another man’s identity as a solution of that conflict between his inclinations and his actualities. And eventually he is picked up as a tramp and wanderer, but protesting violently that he is the man whose identity is stolen. It is very unfortunate that he ever came across an individual whom he resembled, for he might have found a practical solution of his difficulties instead of a psychical one. Well” — von Zero paused — ”I think that is all for to-day Are there any questions? Or, perhaps, before discussing the case with you all, I had better release the patient from his sleep so that he may go back to his ward.”

  His words fell on Middleton’s ear now.

  “Now, my man, when you come from your sleep, I am going to have you moved over into a new ward where you will get a change of scene, so to speak; a bit of shaking up mentally, as it were. We shall cure you and make you free. Keep this fact in your mind.”

  “The devil!” Jerry Middleton came near ejaculating out loud. This was a fine contretemps. Of all things that would have to be nipped in the bud — and nipped quickly — this was it! He spoke suddenly. His words were peacefully monotonous. “I will not be happy in this new ward. I will be comfortable — but not happy. I will be uneasy and unwell. For in my present room is a peculiarly shaped crack. A crack in the ceiling. The crack is in a strange form. Its shape is the shape of my father’s nose. I seem to see my father in that crack. My father — on his great plantation in the South. And then I see — no more!” He allowed his voice to taper off.

  “Ah ha,” said von Zero. “That is very good. Already he is focussing on something connected with his submerged self. Then, this being the case, he must by no means be moved, not even from his room. Perhaps that very crack in the ceiling of it will eventually restore his memory.” He leaned forward. He rubbed his fingers on Middleton’s forehead. Then suddenly he snapped his fingers. “Awake!” he commanded.

  Middleton opened his eyes. He looked about him dazedly. He saw Stonecipher nodding to him. “You
can go now, Doe. Go straight back to your place in the ward, and report to your attendant.” With which command he rose stiffly and passed obediently and quietly through the gap in the screens at the side of the room, looking neither to his right nor to his left.

  “Whew!” he said to himself, “what a narrow escape! Thank God for that crack in the ceiling. Well, old Jonathan, we’re due to hold on to our little room till to-night at any rate. And after that — well — it won’t make any difference, for we’ll be over the Indiana line.”

  CHAPTER XXIV

  A ‘BO AND A GAYCAT

  EVERYTHING was intensely quiet that night at eleven o’clock as Jerry Middleton, after a careful peep down the ward to where Big Svenson, the night watch, was playing his invariable game of solitaire, arose and silently dressed himself in his prison-made garments. Then, with still a further peep, he stepped lightly up on the sill of his window, seized hold of one of the sawn bars, lowered his body until he now gripped the bar with both hands just above the cut, and straining backward with arm muscles, shoulder muscles, and thigh and calf muscles, found that he could bend it up slowly but surely, from the point where he had cut its ribs, nearly forty-five degrees. With a last final look about his room, he thrust out his head — then his torso — turned his body over, and pulled himself gently through the hole by means of the crossbars above him. At last he was through.

  Down below him the green grounds of Birkdale were quite deserted. A bit of a moon shone — but that was all. Crickets sounded here, there, everywhere, in a lively chirruping, and the wind soughed mournfully through the trees.

  He now lowered himself carefully down and finally felt his feet dangling against the bars of the lower window in the receiving ward below. He knew now that he must be very quiet. Getting a foot-rest on the first cross-bar there, and uncoiling from his neck with one hand a rope he had made from his sheet that night, he tied it to the lowest point of the bars on the window by which he was departing. Then with a sharp jerk to see that it was all fast, he slid rapidly down to where he could coil his fingers in the bars of that lower window. And here it proved easy to work himself still further down to where he first hung by his finger-tips from the sill, and then dropped with a light thud to the ground.

  But to his consternation just as he let go of the sill to take the swift drop to the soft turf below, there was framed back of the bars a white staring face, a figure clad in State pyjamas, and the last thing he heard as he picked himself up and made hurriedly off was an unearthly scream. He had been seen. That was only too certain. And how long would it be before the story of that poor devil in that screen room would be interpreted as a real thing and not a delusion. That was the question.

  He flew across the turf with the speed of the wind. Not a soul was stirring. On, on, he went, ever southward, toward that railroad from which sounded the whistles of a dozen trains a day. He passed a number of stone buildings, one of which he recognised as a power-plant by its tall chimney, and finally he reached a high wire fence. And just as he clambered up on it two things happened: the moon became suddenly obscured by a heavy bank of clouds which cut off all light, and he heard the great bell in the fire-tower ring three times, then stop, ring three times again, and keep so doing for a long time thereafter.

  His escape had been uncovered in short order.

  He threshed wildly in the darkness across a field of something growing, colliding with stumps here and there, and finally saw twinkling down below him a murky red light. It was a stationary switchlamp, and he had gained the railroad,

  He went rapidly along the railroad, walking east. He walked in momentary fear of the moon coming out again, but it did not do so. And at last, seeing the green beam of a block signal ahead of him and above him, he knew that he was close to the bridge where Anne Holliston was to be. He had escaped at eleven. It must now be eleven-fifteen — eleven-twenty. He walked on in the darkness and then, by dint of the rays emanating from the block signal, saw that above him was indeed a small wooden bridge.

  There was nothing to do now but to hide and wait. He had hoped that she would reach the rendezvous ahead of him, and would be stationed there even before midnight. But she was not; so he quelled his nervous qualms as best he could and waited.

  Came midnight, as the big clock-bell in the institution far behind him sounded out its twelve distinct strokes. But no Anne Holliston. Now he wondered if anything had gone wrong — if, having proceeded so far as she had on this desperate plan to earn 900 dollars, she had suddenly balked at the last stage?

  And in like manner came 12-30, as signified by the single stroke sounding over the deathly quiet countryside; and then, æons later, another single stroke which proclaimed the hour of one. Strangely now, he felt that he was not going to see her; that something had gone wrong. That was obvious. He had achieved his part successfully — he had come through with flying colours in every detail, but somewhere at her end of things one vital move in the entire sequence of moves had been a mis-move instead.

  When at last he heard three o’clock strike by that clock a quarter-mile or more to the north-west of him, he knew beyond all doubt that he was not going to see Anne Holliston to-night. And to remain in this region meant certain recapture before noon next day. There was nothing to be done but to capitalise the remaining hours of darkness left to him and to cover as much of the space between Birkdale and Indiana as he could that night, hiding by day and continuing to travel in the succeeding nights until he should finally reach Kenburyport. He tramped vigorously, briskly along the railroad track, wondering how soon a train might come his way, wondering whether it would be a freight train, wondering whether it would stop or slow up if it were a freight, and wondering, too, whether it was at all possible to pass into Indiana by railroad without going through Chicago. But as he tramped along the rails, hopping from tie to tie, living out in actuality now that dream he had had the night before of a giant xylophone on which he walked, he suddenly rounded a turn in the right-of-way and there some hundred feet or so to the left of it perceived a crackling fire made of old pieces of railroad ties. A dirty, ragged, not to mention extremely ugly-looking fellow, with tattered hat, sat at the fire stirring something in a can and poking at intervals at its embers, the dancing flames together with shrubbery and small trees about him casting strange flickering lights on his unshaven face.

  He was a wanderer of the road, all right, an American “sundowner,” if such they were termed in this northern hemisphere, and after but a moment’s pause to make sure of the fellow’s status, Jerry Middleton clambered down and strode up to the fire. The fellow in the ragged garments and unshaven face jumped up like a shot, then spoke, displaying a few yellow snags in the place of teeth.

  “Howdy, stranger.” His voice was suspicious. “Lookin’ — er — for somebody?”

  Middleton shook his head and smiled reassuringly. “Just trying to get a little information, and take a little of that cheerful heat you’ve got there, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure. Set,” was the other’s succinct invitation. He resumed his own seat on a hollow log, and commenced stirring his can again. His eyes, however, as he did so, ran over each and every detail of Middleton’s attire, and Middleton, as he took a seat on a piece of rock, perceived the great gaping holes that were in the tramp’s shoes, and the fact that the other was entirely without even the protection of socks.

  “And what information might y’ be lookin’ fer?” said the tramp.

  “What I particularly want to know,” answered the young man, “is where this railroad leads to?” He pointed eastward the direction he had been proceeding.

  “Hell, feller, don’t y’ know where you are? W’y, that leads straight to Chi’.”

  “Chi’. Not Cheyenne, Wyoming?”

  “Hell — no!” Infinite disgust was expressed in the wanderer’s tones. “Chi — cawgo. Cheyenne, Wyo — ? W’at the — ” He shook his head sadly.

  “I stand corrected then,” said Middleton apologeticall
y. And he added: “Is there any way to get east of Chicago toward Indiana without going into the city itself?”

  The tramp surveyed him curiously. Then he spoke. “Say — where are you from?”

  “A long way, my friend,” said Middleton briefly. “From Australia — clear on the other side of the world.”

  “Well then, brother, I’ll tell you. It’s this way: there’s a line goin’ round Chicago called the Belt Line. If you’ll take this ‘ere road an’ get off at a town called Cann — you’d know it by the fac’ that the depot’s all painted white and got a cupolo — the fu’st line to your right there goes clear around Chi’ and cuts all the roads runnin’ out of it east.”

  “I see. And where would it cut the Michigan Central railroad going out of Chicago up through Indiana toward Michigan?”

  “Easy. That’s at a station where there’s a roundhouse painted green, and with three spouts on it. I don’t know th’ name of the place. But follow that there Belt Line on foot or ridin’ a bumper till you come to a roundhouse like w’at I jes’ told you. Then take th’ line runnin’ north an’ you’re on the Michigan Central.”

  “Did you ever hear of a town called Kenburyport?” asked Middleton. “It’s near Michigan.”

  “Naw. Don’t know it. I don’t make them there one-horse towns in Mich.’ He looked his companion over critically. “Hell, fellow, you can’t a-come very far? Purty good front you got there. Purty good shoes. An’ socks in the bargain. You’re fixed pretty, eh?” He leered.

  Middleton looked down at his coarse, ill-fitting asylum attire, and then surveying the other in his cinder-burned rags and tatters, concluded that he was by all manner and means the Beau Brummell of the two. He propounded a further query.