Aladdin & Co.: A Romance of Yankee Magic
There was an elaborate supper, of which Giddings partook in a manner
which tended to prove that his sense of taste was still in his
possession, whatever may have been the case with his other senses. Josie
was there, and Jim was her shadow. She was a little pale, but not at all
sad; her figure, which had within the past year or so acquired something
of the wealth commonly conceded to matronliness, had waned to the
slenderness of the day I first saw her in the art-gallery, but now, as
then, she was slim, not thin. To two, at least, she was a vision of
delight, as one might well see by the look of adoration which Jim poured
into her eyes from time to time, and the hungry gaze with which Cornish
took in the ruddy halo of her hair, the pale and intellectual face
beneath it, and the sensuous curves of the compact little form. For my
own part, my vote was for Antonia, for the belle of the gathering; but
she sailed through the evening, "like some full-breasted swan,"
accepting no homage except the slavish devotion of Cecil, whose constant
offering of his neck to her tread gave him recognition as entitled to
the reward of those who are permitted only to stand and wait.
Mr. Elkins had furnished a special train over the L. & G. W. to make the
run with the bridal party to Elkins Junction, connecting there with the
east-bound limited on the Pendleton line, thence direct to Elysium.
Laura, rosy as a bride should be, and actually attractive to me for the
first time in her life, sat in her traveling-dress trying to look
matter-of-fact, and discussing time-tables with her bridegroom, who
seemed to find less and less of dream and more of the actual in the
situation,--calm returning with the cutaway. Cecil and the coterie of
gilded youth who followed him did their share to bring Giddings back to
earth by a series of practical jokes, hackneyed, but ever fresh. The
largest trunk, after it reached the platform, blossomed out in a sign
reading: "The Property of the Bride and Groom. You can Identify the
Owners by that Absorbed Expression!" Divers revelatory incidents were
arranged to eventuate on the limited train. Precipitation of rice was
produced, in modes known to sleight-of-hand only. So much of this
occurred that Captain Tolliver showed, by a stately refusal to see the
joke, his disapproval of it--a feeling which he expressed in an aside to
me.
"Hoss-play of this so't, suh," said he, "ought not to be tolerated among
civilized people, and I believe is not! In the state of society in which
I was reahed such niggah-shines would mean pistols at ten paces, within
fo'ty-eight houahs, with the lady's neahest male relative! And propahly
so, too, suh; quite propahly!"
"Shall we go to the train, Albert?" said Alice, as the party made ready
to go.
"No," said I, "unless you particularly wish it; we shall go home."
"Mr. Barslow," said one of the maids, "you are wanted at the telephone."
"Is this you, Al?" said Jim's voice over the wire. "I'm up here at
Josie's, and I am afraid there's trouble with her father. When we got
here we found him gone. Hadn't you better go out and look around for
him?"
"Have you any idea where I'm likely to find him?" I asked. I saw at once
the significance of Bill's absence. He had taken advantage of the fact
of his wife and daughter's going to the wedding, and had yielded to the
thing which drew him away from them.
"Try the Club, and then O'Brien's," answered Jim. "If you don't find
him in one place or the other, call me up over the 'phone. Call me up
anyhow; I'll wait here."
The _Times_ man heard my end of the conversation, saw me hastily give
Alice word as to the errand which kept me from going home with her,
observed my preparations for leaving the company, and, scenting news,
fell in with me as I was walking toward the Club.
"Any story in this, Mr. Barslow?" he asked.
"Oh, is that you, Watson?" I answered. "I was going on an errand which
concerns myself. I was going alone."
"If you're looking for any one," he said, trotting along beside me, "I
can find him a good deal quicker than you can, probably. And if there's
news in it, I'll get it anyhow; and I'll naturally know it more from
your standpoint, and look at it more as you do, if we go together. Don't
you think so?"
"See here, Watson," said I, "you may help if you wish. But if you print
a word without my consent, I can and will scoop the _Times_ every day,
from this on, with every item of business news coming through our
office. Do you understand, and do you promise?"
"Why, certainly," said he. "You've got the thing in your own hands. What
is it, anyhow?"
I told him, and found that Trescott's dipsomania was as well known to
him as myself.
"He's been throwing money to the fowls for a year or two," he remarked.
"It's better than two to one you don't find him at the Club: the
atmosphere won't be congenial for him there."
At the Club we found Watson's forecast verified. At O'Brien's our
knocking on the door aroused a sleepy bartender, who told us that no one
was there, but refused to let us in. Watson called him aside, and they
talked together for a few minutes.
"All right," said the reporter, turning away from him, "much obliged,
Hank; I believe you've struck it."
Watson was leader now, and I followed him toward Front Street, near the
river. He said that Hank, the barkeeper, had told him that Trescott had
been in his saloon about nine o'clock, drinking heavily; and from the
company he was in, it was to be suspected that he would be steered into
a joint down on the river front. We passed through an alley, and down a
back basement stairway, came to a door, on which Watson confidently
knocked, and which was opened by a negro who let us in as soon as he saw
the reporter. The air was sickening with an odor which I then perceived
for the first time, and which Watson called the dope smell. There was an
indefinable horror about the place, which so repelled me that nothing
but my obligation could have held me there. The lights were dim, and at
first I could see nothing more than that the sides of the room were
divided into compartments by dull-colored draperies, in a manner
suggesting the sections of a sleeping-car. There were sounds of dreadful
breathings and inarticulate voices, and over all that sickening smell. I
saw, flung aimlessly from the crepuscular and curtained recesses, here
the hairy brawn of a man's arm, there a woman's leg in scarlet silk
stocking, the foot half withdrawn from a red slipper with a high French
heel. The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows had opened for me, and I stood as if
gazing, with eyes freshly unsealed to its horrors, into some dim
inferno, sibilant with hisses, and enwrapped in indeterminate
dragon-folds--and I in quest of a lost soul.
"He wouldn't go with his pal, boss," I heard the negro say. "Ah tried to
send him home, but he said he had some medicine to take, an' he 'nsisted
on stayin'."
As he ceased to speak, I knew that Watson had been interrogating him,
and that he was referring to the man we sought.
"Show me where he is," I commanded.
"Yes, boss! Right hyah, sah!"
In an inner room, on a bed, not a pallet like those in the first
chamber, was Trescott, his head lying peacefully on a pillow, his hands
clasped across his chest. Somehow, I was not surprised to see no
evidence of life, no rise and fall of the breast, no sound of breathing.
But Watson started forward in amazement, laid his hand for a moment on
the pallid forehead, lifted for an instant and then dropped the inert
hand, turned and looked fixedly in my face, and whispered, "My God! He's
dead!"
As if at some great distance, I heard the negro saying, "He done said he
hed ter tek some medicine, boss. Ah hopes you-all won't make no trouble
foh me, boss--!"
"Send for a doctor!" said I. "Telephone Mr. Elkins, at Trescott's home!"
Watson darted out, and for an eternity, as it seemed to me, I stood
there alone. There was a scurrying of the vermin in the place to snatch
up a few valuables and flee, as if they had been the crawling things
under some soon-to-be-lifted stone, to whom light was a calamity. I was
left with the Stillness before me, and the dreadful breathings and
inarticulate voices outside. Then came the clang and rattle of ambulance
and patrol, and in came a policeman or two, a physician, a _Herald_ man
and Watson, who was bitterly complaining of Bill for having had the bad
taste to die on the morning paper's time.
And soon came Jim, in a carriage, whirled along the street like a racing
chariot--with whom I rode home, silent, save for answering his
questions. Now the wife, gazing out of her door, saw in the street the
Something for which she had peered past me the other night.
The men carried it in at the door, and laid it on the divan. Josie, her
arms and shoulders still bare in the dress she had worn to the wedding,
broke away from Cornish, who was bending over her and saying things to
comfort her, and swept down the hall to the divan where Bill lay, white
and still, and clothed with the mystic majesty of death. The shimmering
silk and lace of her gown lay all along the rug and over the divan, like
drapery thrown there to conceal what lay before us. She threw her arms
across the still breast, and her head went down on his.
"Oh, pa! Oh, pa!" she moaned, "you never did any one any harm!... You
were always good and kind!... And always loving and forgiving.... And
why should they come to you, poor pa ... and take you from the things
you loved ... and ... murder you ... like this!"
Jim fell back, as if staggering from a blow. Cornish came forward, and
offered to raise up the stricken girl, whose eyes shone in her grief
like the eyes of insanity. Alice stepped before Cornish, raised Josie
up, and supported her from the room.
* * * * *
Again it was morning, when we--Alice, Jim, and I--sat face to face in
our home. An untasted breakfast was spread before us. Jim's eyes were on
the cloth, and nothing served to rouse him. I knew that the blow from
which he had staggered still benumbed his faculties.
"Come," said I, "we shall need your best thought down at the Grain Belt
Building in a couple of hours. This brings things to a crisis. We shall
have a terrible dilemma to face, it's likely. Eat and be ready to face
it!"
"God!" said he, "it's the old tale over again, Al: throw the dead and
wounded overboard to clear the decks, and on with the fight!"
CHAPTER XIX.
In Which Events Resume their Usual Course--at a Somewhat Accelerated
Pace.
The death of Mr. Trescott was treated with that consideration which the
affairs of the locally prominent always receive in towns where local
papers are in close financial touch with the circle affected. Nothing
was said of suicide, or of the place where the body was found; and in
fact I doubt if the family ever knew the real facts; but the property
matters were looked upon as a legitimate subject for comment.
"Yesterday," said, in due time, the _Herald_, "the Trescott estate
passed into the hands of Will Lattimore, as administrator. He was
appointed upon the petition of Martha D. Trescott, the widow. His bond,
in the sum of $500,000, was signed by James R. Elkins, Albert F.
Barslow, J. Bedford Cornish, and Marion Tolliver, as sureties, and is
said to be the largest in amount ever filed in our local Probate Court.
"Mr. Lattimore is non-committal as to the value of the estate. The bond
is not to be taken as altogether indicative of this value, as additional
bonds may be called for at any time, and the individual responsibility
of the administrator is very large. He will at once enter upon the work
of settling up the estate, receiving and filing claims, and preparing