The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “The next morning at eleven o’clock when I was sitting there alone, an Uncle Tom shuffles into the hotel and asked for the doctor to come and see Judge Banks, who, it seems, was the mayor and a mighty sick man.

  “‘I’m no doctor,’ says I. ‘Why don’t you go and get the doctor?’

  “‘Boss,’ says he. ‘Doc Hoskins am done gone twenty miles in de country to see some sick persons. He’s de only doctor in de town, and Massa Banks am powerful bad off. He sent me to ax you to please, suh, come.’

  “‘As man to man,’ says I, ‘I’ll go and look him over.’ So I put a bottle of Resurrection Bitters in my pocket and goes up on the hill to the mayor’s mansion, the finest house in town, with a mansard roof and two cast iron dogs on the lawn.

  “This Mayor Banks was in bed all but his whiskers and feet. He was making internal noises that would have had everybody in San Francisco hiking for the parks. A young man was standing by the bed holding a cup of water.

  “‘Doc,’ says the Mayor, ‘I’m awful sick. I’m about to die. Can’t you do nothing for me?’

  “‘Mr. Mayor,’ says I, ‘I’m not a regular preordained disciple of S. Q. Lapius. I never took a course in a medical college,’ says I. ‘I’ve just come as a fellow man to see if I could be off assistance.’

  “‘I’m deeply obliged,’ says he. ‘Doc Waugh-hoo, this is my nephew, Mr. Biddle. He has tried to alleviate my distress, but without success. Oh, Lordy! Ow-ow-ow!!’ he sings out.

  “I nods at Mr. Biddle and sets down by the bed and feels the mayor’s pulse. ‘Let me see your liver—your tongue, I mean,’ says I. Then I turns up the lids of his eyes and looks close that the pupils of ‘em.

  “‘How long have you been sick?’ I asked.

  “‘I was taken down—ow-ouch—last night,’ says the Mayor. ‘Gimme something for it, doc, won’t you?’

  “‘Mr. Fiddle,’ says I, ‘raise the window shade a bit, will you?’

  “‘Biddle,’ says the young man. ‘Do you feel like you could eat some ham and eggs, Uncle James?’

  “‘Mr. Mayor,’ says I, after laying my ear to his right shoulder blade and listening, ‘you’ve got a bad attack of super-inflammation of the right clavicle of the harpsichord!’

  “‘Good Lord!’ says he, with a groan, ‘Can’t you rub something on it, or set it or anything?’

  “I picks up my hat and starts for the door.

  “‘You ain’t going, doc?’ says the Mayor with a howl. ‘You ain’t going away and leave me to die with this—superfluity of the clapboards, are you?’

  “‘Common humanity, Dr. Whoa-ha,’ says Mr. Biddle, ‘ought to prevent your deserting a fellow-human in distress.’

  “‘Dr. Waugh-hoo, when you get through plowing,’ says I. And then I walks back to the bed and throws back my long hair.

  “‘Mr. Mayor,’ says I, ‘there is only one hope for you. Drugs will do you no good. But there is another power higher yet, although drugs are high enough,’ says I.

  “‘And what is that?’ says he.

  “‘Scientific demonstrations,’ says I. ‘The triumph of mind over sarsaparilla. The belief that there is no pain and sickness except what is produced when we ain’t feeling well. Declare yourself in arrears. Demonstrate.’

  “‘What is this paraphernalia you speak of, Doc?’ says the Mayor. ‘You ain’t a Socialist, are you?’

  “‘I am speaking,’ says I, ‘of the great doctrine of psychic financiering—of the enlightened school of long-distance, sub-conscientious treatment of fallacies and meningitis—of that wonderful in-door sport known as personal magnetism.’

  “‘Can you work it, doc?’ asks the Mayor.

  “‘I’m one of the Sole Sanhedrims and Ostensible Hooplas of the Inner Pulpit,’ says I. ‘The lame talk and the blind rubber whenever I make a pass at ‘em. I am a medium, a coloratura hypnotist and a spirituous control. It was only through me at the recent seances at Ann Arbor that the late president of the Vinegar Bitters Company could revisit the earth to communicate with his sister Jane. You see me peddling medicine on the street,’ says I, ‘to the poor. I don’t practice personal magnetism on them. I do not drag it in the dust,’ says I, ‘because they haven’t got the dust.’

  “‘Will you treat my case?’ asks the Mayor.

  “‘Listen,’ says I. ‘I’ve had a good deal of trouble with medical societies everywhere I’ve been. I don’t practice medicine. But, to save your life, I’ll give you the psychic treatment if you’ll agree as mayor not to push the license question.’

  “‘Of course I will,’ says he. ‘And now get to work, doc, for them pains are coming on again.’

  “‘My fee will be $250.00, cure guaranteed in two treatments,’ says I.

  “‘All right,’ says the Mayor. ‘I’ll pay it. I guess my life’s worth that much.’

  “I sat down by the bed and looked him straight in the eye.

  “‘Now,’ says I, ‘get your mind off the disease. You ain’t sick. You haven’t got a heart or a clavicle or a funny bone or brains or anything. You haven’t got any pain. Declare error. Now you feel the pain that you didn’t have leaving, don’t you?’

  “‘I do feel some little better, doc,’ says the Mayor, ‘darned if I don’t. Now state a few lies about my not having this swelling in my left side, and I think I could be propped up and have some sausage and buckwheat cakes.’

  “I made a few passes with my hands.

  “‘Now,’ says I, ‘the inflammation’s gone. The right lobe of the perihelion has subsided. You’re getting sleepy. You can’t hold your eyes open any longer. For the present the disease is checked. Now, you are asleep.’

  “The Mayor shut his eyes slowly and began to snore.

  “‘You observe, Mr. Tiddle,’ says I, ‘the wonders of modern science.’

  “‘Biddle,’ says he, ‘When will you give uncle the rest of the treatment, Dr. Pooh-pooh?’

  “‘Waugh-hoo,’ says I. ‘I’ll come back at eleven to-morrow. When he wakes up give him eight drops of turpentine and three pounds of steak. Good morning.’

  “The next morning I was back on time. ‘Well, Mr. Riddle,’ says I, when he opened the bedroom door, ‘and how is uncle this morning?’

  “‘He seems much better,’ says the young man.

  “The mayor’s color and pulse was fine. I gave him another treatment, and he said the last of the pain left him.

  “‘Now,’ says I, ‘you’d better stay in bed for a day or two, and you’ll be all right. It’s a good thing I happened to be in Fisher Hill, Mr. Mayor,’ says I, ‘for all the remedies in the cornucopia that the regular schools of medicine use couldn’t have saved you. And now that error has flew and pain proved a perjurer, let’s allude to a cheerfuller subject—say the fee of $250. No checks, please, I hate to write my name on the back of a check almost as bad as I do on the front.’

  “‘I’ve got the cash here,’ says the mayor, pulling a pocket book from under his pillow.

  “He counts out five fifty-dollar notes and holds ‘em in his hand.

  “‘Bring the receipt,’ he says to Biddle.

  “I signed the receipt and the mayor handed me the money. I put it in my inside pocket careful.

  “‘Now do your duty, officer,’ says the mayor, grinning much unlike a sick man.

  “Mr. Biddle lays his hand on my arm.

  “‘You’re under arrest, Dr. Waugh-hoo, alias Peters,’ says he, ‘for practising medicine without authority under the State law.’

  “‘Who are you?’ I asks.

  “‘I’ll tell you who he is,’ says Mr. Mayor, sitting up in bed. ‘He’s a detective employed by the State Medical Society. He’s been following you over five counties. He came to me yesterday and we fixed up this scheme to catch you. I guess you won’t do
any more doctoring around these parts, Mr. Fakir. What was it you said I had, doc?’ the mayor laughs, ‘compound—well, it wasn’t softening of the brain, I guess, anyway.’

  “‘A detective,’ says I.

  “‘Correct,’ says Biddle. ‘I’ll have to turn you over to the sheriff.’

  “‘Let’s see you do it,’ says I, and I grabs Biddle by the throat and half throws him out the window, but he pulls a gun and sticks it under my chin, and I stand still. Then he puts handcuffs on me, and takes the money out of my pocket.

  “‘I witness,’ says he, ‘that they’re the same bank bills that you and I marked, Judge Banks. I’ll turn them over to the sheriff when we get to his office, and he’ll send you a receipt. They’ll have to be used as evidence in the case.’

  “‘All right, Mr. Biddle,’ says the mayor. ‘And now, Doc Waugh-hoo,’ he goes on, ‘why don’t you demonstrate? Can’t you pull the cork out of your magnetism with your teeth and hocus-pocus them handcuffs off?’

  “‘Come on, officer,’ says I, dignified. ‘I may as well make the best of it.’ And then I turns to old Banks and rattles my chains.

  “‘Mr. Mayor,’ says I, ‘the time will come soon when you’ll believe that personal magnetism is a success. And you’ll be sure that it succeeded in this case, too.’

  “And I guess it did.

  “When we got nearly to the gate, I says: ‘We might meet somebody now, Andy. I reckon you better take ‘em off, and—‘Hey? Why, of course it was Andy Tucker. That was his scheme; and that’s how we got the capital to go into business together.”

  THE ASSASSINS’ CLUB, by Gelett Burgess

  “Every time I see a gargoyle,” said Astro, “I feel a thrill of secret kinship. It’s as if I were the only one who understood its mystery. If I were romantic, I would say that in a previous incarnation I had lived in the dark ages. What do you think about gargoyles, Valeska?”

  Astro looked up from a book of Viollet-le-Duc’s architectural drawings and glanced across to the pretty blond head. His assistant, busy with her card catalogue, where she kept memoranda of the Seer’s famous cases, made a delightful picture against the dull crimson hangings of the wall.

  She came over to him and looked down across his shoulder at the pictures of the grotesque stone monsters. “Why,” she said, “I’ve seen those horrible cynical old ones on Notre Dame in Paris, that gaze down on the city roofs. I’ve always wondered why they placed them on beautiful churches.”

  “It’s a deep question,” said Astro, his eyes still on the engraving. “But to my mind they symbolize the ancient cult of Wonder. In the Middle Ages men really wondered; they didn’t anticipate flying-machines years before they were invented, as we moderns do. They took nothing for granted. Everything in life was a miracle.”

  Valeska dropped quietly into a seat to listen. Astro had many moods. Sometimes he was the dreamy occult Seer, cryptic, mysterious; again he was the alert man of affairs, keen, logical, worldly. She had seen him, too, in society, affable, bland, jocose. But in this introspective, whimsical, analytic mood she got nearest him and learned something of the true import of his life.

  He went on, his eyes half-closed, his red silken robe enveloping him like a shroud, the diamond in his turban glittering as he moved his head. His olive-skinned, picturesque face with its dark eyes was serene and quiet now. A little blue-tailed lizard, one of Astro’s many exotic fancies, frisked across the table. He caught it and held it as he talked.

  “In the thirteenth century clergy and laity alike believed that the forces of good and evil were almost equally balanced. They worshiped the Almighty, but propitiated Satan as well; so these grotesque beasts leered down from the cornices of the house of God, and watched the holy offices of priests. The devil had his own litany, his own science. They were forbidden practises, but they flourished then among the most intellectual people as they flourish now among the most ignorant. Magic was then a science, now it is a fake. Still, a man’s chief desire is to get something for nothing, to find a short cut to wisdom. The “gargoyle is replaced by the dollar mark. So be it! One must earn one’s living. Selah! I have spoken!”

  He looked up with a smile and a boyish twinkle in his eyes. Then his businesslike, cynical self returned. He jumped up, tall and eager, a picturesque oriental figure informed with the stirring life of the West.

  “Valeska, I’ve been reading about the Devil-worshipers of Paris,—the black mass, infant sacrifices, and all that. That’s an anachronistic cult. I’d like to know if there really is any genuine survival of the worship of Evil?”

  Valeska shuddered. “Oh, that would be horrible!”

  “But interesting.” He clasped his hands behind him and gazed up at the silver-starred ceiling. “I don’t mean degeneracy or insanity, but a man that does evil for the love of it, as they did in the old days. Think, for instance, of the lost art of torture the science of human suffering—”

  “Oh, don’t! I hate to have you talk like that!” Valeska put a hand on his arm.

  “Very well, I won’t.” He snapped his fingers as if to rid himself of the thought, and walked into the reception-room adjoining the great studio.

  Valeska went back to her work. For some minutes she arranged her cards in their tin box; then, hearing voices outside, she looked up and listened. Then she walked softly across the heavy rugs and, touching a button in the mahogany wainscoting, passed through a secret door.

  * * * *

  Scarcely had she disappeared when Astro returned, ushering in a young woman stylishly dressed in brown. When she put aside her veil her face shone out like a portrait, vivid, instinct with grace and a delicate, rare, high-bred beauty, full of character and force. Astro showed her a seat under the electric lamp.

  “I thought you would help me if any one could,” she was saying, in continuation of her conversation in the reception-room. “If it were anything less vague, I’d speak to mother about it; but it’s too strange and elusive. I’m sure he has not been drinking; I would notice that in other ways. And yet he is different, he is not himself. It frightens me.”

  “Have you spoken to him about it?” Astro asked.

  “Yes; but he won’t say anything. He evades it, and says he’s all right. But I don’t dare to marry him till I know what it is that has changed him. I know it seems disloyal to suspect him, but how can I help it?”

  “What is Mr. Cameron’s business?”

  “He’s a naval lieutenant, in the construction department at the Brooklyn navy yard. And that is another reason why I’m worried. He has charge of work that is important and secret. If this change—whatever it is—should affect his work, he’d be disgraced; he might even be dishonorably discharged.”

  “When have you noticed this peculiarity of his? At any particular time?”

  “Usually on Sundays, when he almost always comes to call; but sometimes in the middle of the week. At times he talks queerly, almost as if in his sleep, of colors and queer landscapes that have nothing to do with what we are discussing. Sometimes he doesn’t even finish his sentences and goes off into a sort of daze for a minute; and then he’ll ask my pardon and go on as if nothing had happened.”

  “And when shall you see him next?”

  “He will probably come Saturday afternoon. Usually he stays to dinner, but of late he has been having engagements that prevent.”

  “All right,” said the Seer; “I’ll see what I can do. Knowing that he is at your house, I shall be able to orient myself and thereby be more receptive to his astral influence. I shall then be able to ascertain the cause of any psychic disturbance.”

  The young woman, rising to go, looked at him plaintively. “Oh, I hope I haven’t done wrong in telling you about it! But I do love him so I can’t bear to see him so changed!”

  “My dear Miss Mannering,” said Astro kindly, “you need ha
ve no fear, I assure you. Your business shall be kept absolutely confidential. With the exception of my assistant, no one shall ever know that you came here.”

  “Your assistant?” She looked at him doubtfully.

  “Miss Wynne.”

  She seemed surprised. “A lady?” she asked; then, timidly, “Might I see her?”

  “Certainly.” Astro touched a bell.

  In a moment Valeska appeared between the velvet portieres, and waited there, her piquant sensitive face questioning his wish, her golden hair brightly illuminated from behind.

  Miss Mannering walked to her impulsively and took her hand. “Might I speak to you for a moment?” she asked.

  Valeska, giving Astro a glance, led the visitor into the reception-room.

  “I had no idea that Astro had a lady assistant,” she said. “I feel much better about having told him, now.”

  Valeska smiled at her and held the hand in both hers. “Oh, I only do some of his routine work,” she said; “but he often discusses his important cases with me. I’m sure that he can help you. He is wonderful, I never knew him to fail.”

  “Miss Wynne,” said the visitor, “no one but a woman can understand how distressed I am. I’m sure I can trust you; I can read that in your face. I am always sure of my intuitions. And, now that I have seen you, I’m going to tell you something that I didn’t quite dare to tell Astro. I know my fiance is in some trouble. But what I’m afraid of is too dreadful; it terrifies me! Here! look at this! It dropped out of Mr. Cameron’s pocket the last time he called, and I found it after he had gone.”

  She handed an envelope to Valeska, who looked at it carefully and drew out a single sheet of paper. On this was written in green ink:

  “Be at the Assassins’ Saturday at seven. Haskell’s turn.”

  “What can that mean?” Miss Mannering whispered. “I didn’t dare to show it for fear of getting Bob into trouble in some way. That word ‘Assassins’ Oh, it’s awful!”