After a year’s probation, I accompanied him on several expeditions, and had the happiness to believe that I was of some little use to him. I shot him eventually in the stomach, mistaking him for the master of a house into which we were breaking (I had mislaid my dark lantern), and he died on the grand piano. His dying wish was that his compliments might be conveyed to me. I now set up on my own account, and engaged his poor old clerk, who nearly broke his heart at his late master’s funeral. Stoneleigh left no family. His money —about £12,000, invested for the most part in American railways —he left to the Society for Providing More Bishops; and his ledgers, daybooks, memoranda, and papers generally he bequeathed to me.
As the chambers required furnishing, I lost no time in commencing my professional duties. I looked through his books for a suitable house to begin upon, and found the following attractive entry:
Thurloe Square.—No. 102.
House. —Medium.
Occupant. —John Davis, bachelor.
Occupation. —Designer of Dados.
Age. —86
Physical Peculiarities. —Very feeble; eccentric; drinks; Evangelical; snores.
Servants. —Two housemaids, one cook.
Sex. —All female.
Particulars of Servants. —Pretty housemaid called Rachel; Jewess; open to attentions. Goes out for beer at 9 p.m.; snores. Ugly housemaid, called Bella; Presbyterian. Open to attentions; snores. Elderly cook; Primitive Methodist. Open to attentions; snores.
Fastenings. —Chubb’s lock on street door, chain, and bolts. Bars to all basement windows. Practicable aooroach from third room, ground floor, which is shuttered and barred, but bar has no catch, and can be raised with table knife.
Valuable Contents of House. —Presentation plate from grateful aesthetes. Gold repeater. Mulready envelope. Two diamond rings. Complete edition of “Bradshaw,” from 1834 to present time, 588 volumes, bound in limp calf.
General. —Mr. Davis sleeps second floor front; servants on third floor. Davis goes to bed at ten. No one on basement. Swarms with beetles; otherwise excellent house for purpose.
This seemed to me to be a capital house to try single-handed. At twelve o’clock that very night I pocketed two crowbars, a bunch of skeleton keys, a centre-bit, a dark lantern, a box of silent matches, some putty, a life-preserver, and a knife; and I set off at once for Thurloe Square. I remember that it snowed heavily. There was at least a foot of snow un the ground, and there was more to come. Poor Stoneleigh’s particulars were exact in every detail. I got into the third room on the ground floor without any difficulty, and made my way into the dining-room. There was the presentation plate, sure enough —about 800 ounces, as I reckoned. I collected this, and tied it up so that I could carry it without attracting attention.
Just as I had finished, I heard a slight cough behind me. I turned and saw a dear old silver-haired gentleman in a dressing-gown standing in the doorway. The venerable gentleman covered me with a revolver.
My first impulse was to rush at and brain him with my life-preserver.
“Don’t move,” said he, “or you’re a dead man.”
A rather silly remark occurred to me to the effect that if I did move it would rather prove that I was a live man, but I dismissed it at once as unsuited to the business character of the interview.
“You’re a burglar?” said he.
“I have that honour,” said I, making for my pistol-pocket.
“Don’t move,” said he; “I have often wished to have the pleasure of encountering a burglar, in order to be able to test a favourite theory of mine as to how persons of that class should be dealt with. But you mustn’t move.”
I replied that I should be happy to assist him, if I could do so consistently with a due regard to my own safety.
“Promise me,” said I, “ that you will allow me to leave the house unmolested when your experiment is at an end?”
“If you will obey me promptly, you shall be at perfect liberty to leave the house.”
“You will neither give me into custody, nor take any steps to pursue me.”
“On my honour as a Designer of Dados,” said he.
“Good,” said I; “go on.”
“Stand up,” said he, “and stretch out your arms at right angles to your body.”
“Suppose I don’t?” said I.
“I send a bullet through your left ear,” said he.
“But permit me to observe “ said I.
Bang! A ball cut off the lobe of my left ear.
The ear smarted, and I should have liked to attend to it, but under the circumstances I thought it better to comply with the whimsical old gentleman’s wishes.
“Very good,” said he. “Now do as I tell you, promptly and without a moment’s hesitation, or I cut off the lobe of your right ear. Throw me that life-preserver.”
“But—”
“Ah, would you?” said he, cocking the revolver.
The “click” decided me. Besides, the old gentleman’s eccentricity amused me, and I was curious to see how far it would carry him. So I tossed my life-preserver to him. He caught it neatly.
“Now take off your coat and throw it to me.”
I took off my coat, and threw it diagonally across the room.
“Now the waistcoat.”
I threw the waistcoat to him.
“Boots,” said he.
“They are shoes,” said I, in some trepidation lest he should take offence when no offence was really intended.
“Shoes then,” said he.
I threw my shoes to him.
“Trousers,” said he.
“Come, come; I say,” exclaimed I.
Bang! The lobe of the other ear came off. With all his eccentricity the old gentleman was a man of his word. He had the trousers, and with them my revolver, which happened to be in the right-hand pocket.
“Now the rest of your drapery.”
I threw him the rest of my drapery. He tied up my clothes in the table-cloth; and, telling me that he wouldn’t detain me any longer, made for the door with the bundle under his arm.
“Stop,” said I. “What is to become of me?”
“Really, I hardly know,” said he.
“You promised me my liberty,” said I.
“Certainly,” said he. “Don’t let me trespass any further on your time. You will find the street door open; or, if from force of habit you prefer the window, you will have no difficulty in clearing the area railings.”
“But I can’t go like this! Won’t you give me something to put on?”
“No,” said he, “ nothing at all. Good night.”
The quaint old man left the room with my bundle. I went after him, but I found that he had locked an inner door that led up stairs. The position was really a difficult one to deal with. I couldn’t possibly go into the street as I was, and if I remained I should certainly be given into custody in the morning. For some time I looked in vain for something to cover myself with. The hats and great coats were no doubt in the inner hall, at all events they were not accessible under the circumstances. There was a carpet on the floor, but it was fitted to the recesses of the room, and, moreover, a heavy sideboard stood upon it.
“However, there were twelve chairs in the room, and it was with no little pleasure I found on the back of each an antimacassar. Twelve antimacassars would go a long way towards covering me, and that was something.
I did my best with the antimacassars, but on reflection I came to the conclusion that they would not help me very much. They certainly covered me, but a gentleman walking through South Kensington at 3 a.m. dressed in nothing whatever but antimacassars, with the snow two feet deep on the ground, would be sure to attract attention. I might pretend that I was doing it for a wager, but who would believe me? I grew very cold.
I looked out of window, and presently saw the bull’s-eye of a policeman who was wearily plodding through the snow. I felt that my only course was to surrender to him.
“Policeman,�
�� said I, from the window, “one word.”
“Anything wrong, sir’?” said he.
“I have been committing a burglary in this house, and shall feel deeply obliged to you if you will kindly take me into custody.”
“Nonsense, sir,” said he; “you’d better go to bed.”
“There is nothing I should like better, but I live in Lincoln’s Inn, and I have nothing on but antimacassars. I am almost frozen. Pray take me into custody.”
“The street door’s open,” said he.
“Yes,” said I. “ Come in.”
He came in. I explained the circumstances to him, and with great difficulty I convinced him that I was in earnest. The good fellow put his own great coat over me, and lent me his own handcuffs. In ten minutes I was thawing myself in Walton Street police station. In ten days I was convicted at the Old Bailey. In ten years I returned from penal servitude.
I found that poor Mr. Davis had gone to his long home in Brompton Cemetery.
For many years I never passed his house without a shudder at the terrible hours I spent in it as his guest. I have often tried to forget the incident I have been relating, and for a long time I tried in vain. Perseverance, however, met with its reward. I continued to try. Gradually one detail after another slipped from memory, and one lovely evening last May I found, to my intense delight, that I had absolutely forgotten all about it.
CHEATING THE GALLOWS, by Israel Zangwill
Curious Couple
They say that a union of opposites makes the happiest marriage, and perhaps it is on the same principle that men who chum are always so oddly assorted. You shall find a man of letters sharing diggings with an auctioneer, and a medical student pigging with a stockbroker’s clerk. Perhaps each thus escapes the temptation to talk “shop” in his hours of leisure while he supplements his own experiences of life by his companion’s.
There could not be an odder couple than Tom Peters and Everard G. Roxdal—the contrast began with their names, and ran through the entire chapter. They had a bedroom and a sitting-room in common, but it would not be easy to find what else. To his landlady, worthy Mrs. Seacon, Tom Peters’ profession was a little vague, but everybody knew that Roxdal was the manager of the City and Suburban Bank, and it puzzled her to think why a bank manager should live with such a seedy-looking person, who smoked clay pipes and sipped whiskey and water all the evening when he was at home. For Roxdal was as spruce and erect as his fellow-lodger was round-shouldered and shabby; he never smoked, and he confined himself to a small glass of claret at dinner.
It is possible to live with a man and see very little of him. Where each of the partners lives his own life in his own way, with his own circle of friends and external amusements, days may go by without the men having five minutes together. Perhaps this explains why these partnerships jog along so much more peaceably than marriages, where the chain is drawn so much tighter, and galls the partners rather than links them. Diverse, however, as were the hours and habits of the chums, they often breakfasted together, and they agreed in one thing—they never stayed out at night. For the rest Peters sought his diversions in the company of journalists and frequented debating rooms, where he propounded the most iconoclastic views; while Roxdal had highly respectable houses open to him in the suburbs and was, in fact, engaged to be married to Clara Newell, the charming daughter of a retired corn merchant, a widower with no other child.
Clara naturally took up a good deal of Roxdal’s time, and he often dressed to go to a play with her, while Peters stayed at home in a faded dressing-gown and loose slippers. Mrs. Seacon liked to see gentlemen about the house in evening dress, and made comparisons not favourable to Peters. And this in spite of the fact that he gave her infinitely less trouble than the younger man.
It was Peters who first took the apartments, and it was characteristic of his easy-going temperament that he was so openly and naively delighted with the view of the Thames obtainable from the bedroom window that Mrs. Seacon was emboldened to ask twenty-five percent more than she had intended. She soon returned to her normal terms, however, when his friend Roxdal called the next day to inspect the rooms and overwhelmed her with a demonstration of their numerous shortcomings. He pointed out that their being on the ground floor was not an advantage, but a disadvantage, since they were nearer the noises of the street—in fact, the house being a corner one, the noises of two streets.
Roxdal continued to exhibit the same finicking temperament in the petty details of the ménage. His shirt fronts were never sufficiently starched, nor his boots sufficiently polished. Tom Peters, having no regard for rigid linen, was always good-tempered and satisfied and never acquired the respect of his landlady. He wore blue check shirts and loose ties even on Sundays. It is true he did not go to church, but slept on till Roxdal returned from morning service, and even then it was difficult to get him out of bed, or to make him hurry up his toilette operations. Often the mid-day meal would be smoking on the table while Peters would smoke in the bed, and Roxdal, with his head thrust through the folding doors that separated the bedroom from the sitting-room, would be adjuring the sluggard to arise and shake off his slumbers and threatening to sit down without him, lest the dinner be spoilt.
In revenge, Tom was usually up first on weekdays, sometimes at such un-earthly hours that Polly had not yet removed the boots from outside the bedroom door, and would bawl down to the kitchen for his shaving water. For Tom, lazy and indolent as he was, shaved with the unfailing regularity of a man to whom shaving has become an instinct. If he had not kept fairly regular hours, Mrs. Seacon would have set him down as an actor, so clean-shaven was he.
Roxdal did not shave. He wore a full beard and, being a fine figure of a man to boot, no uneasy investor could look upon him without being re-assured as to the stability of the bank he managed so successfully. And thus the two men lived in an economical comradeship, all the firmer, perhaps, for their mutual incongruities.
Woman’s Instinct
It was on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of October, ten days after Roxdal had settled in his new rooms, that Clara Newell paid her first visit to him there. She enjoyed a good deal of liberty and did not mind accepting his invitation to tea. The corn merchant, himself indifferently educated, had an exaggerated sense of the value of culture, and so Clara, who had artistic tastes without much actual talent, had gone in for painting and might be seen, in pretty little toils, copying pictures in the Museum. At one time it looked as if she might be reduced to working seriously at her art, for Satan, who finds mischief still for idle hands to do, had persuaded her father to invest the fruits of years of work in bubble companies. However, things turned out not so bad as they might have been, a little was saved from the wreck, and the appearance of a suitor, in the person of Everard G. Roxdal, ensured her a future of competence, if not of the luxury she had been entitled to expect. She had a good deal of affection for Everard, who was unmistakably a clever man, as well as a good-looking one. The prospect seemed fair and cloudless.
Nothing presaged the terrible storm that was about to break over these two lives. Nothing had ever for a moment come to vex their mutual contentment till this Sunday afternoon. The October sky, blue and sunny, with an Indian summer sultriness, seemed an exact image of her life, with its aftermath of a happiness that had once seemed blighted.
Everard had always been so attentive, so solicitous, that she was as much surprised as chagrined to find that he had apparently forgotten the appointment. Hearing her astonished interrogation of Polly in the passage, Tom shambled from the sitting-room in his loose slippers and his blue check shirt, with his eternal clay pipe in his mouth, and informed her that Roxdal had gone out suddenly earlier in the afternoon.
“G-g-one out,” stammered poor Clara; all confused. “But he asked me to come to tea.”
“Oh, you’re Miss Newell, I suppose,” said Tom.
“Yes, I am Miss Newell.”
“He has told me a great deal about you, but I wasn’t ab
le honestly to congratulate him on his choice till now.”
Clara blushed uneasily under the compliment, and under the ardour of his admiring gaze. Instinctively she distrusted the man. The very first tones of his deep bass voice gave her a peculiar shudder. And then his impoliteness in smoking that vile clay was so gratuitous.
“Oh, then you must be Mr. Peters,” she said in return. “He has often spoken to me of you.”
“Ah!” said Tom, laughingly, “I suppose he’s told you all my vices. That accounts for your not being surprised at my Sunday attire.”
She smiled a little, showing a row of pearly teeth. “Everard ascribes to you all the virtues,” she said.
“Now that’s what I call a friend!” he cried. “But won’t you come in? He must be back in a moment. He surely would not break an appointment with you.” The admiration latent in the accentuation of the last pronoun was almost offensive.
She shook her head. She had a just grievance against Everard and would punish him by going away indignantly.
“Do let me give you a cup of tea,” Tom pleaded. “You must be awfully thirsty this sultry weather. There! I will make a bargain with you! If you will come in now, I promise to clear out the moment Everard returns and not spoil your tête-á-tête.”
But Clara was obstinate; she did not at all relish this man’s society, and besides, she was not going to throw away her grievance against Everard.
“I know Everard will slang me dreadfully when he comes in if I let you go,” Tom urged. “Tell me at least where he can find you.”
“I am going to take the ’bus at Charing Cross, and I’m going straight home,” Clara announced determinedly.
She put up her parasol and went up the street into the Strand. A cold shadow seemed to have fallen over all things.
But just as she was getting into the ’bus, a hansom dashed down Trafalgar Square, and a well-known voice hailed her. The hansom cab stopped, and Everard got out and held out his hand.
The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales Page 32