Out of the Hurly-Burly; Or, Life in an Odd Corner

by Charles Heber Clark

  CHAPTER XXI.

  SETTLING THE BUSINESS--VINDICATION OF MR. BOB PARKER--A COMPLETE RECONCILIATION--THE GREAT COOLEY INQUEST--THE UNCERTAINTY IN REGARD TO THOMAS COOLEY--A PHENOMENAL CORONER--PROFITABLE INVESTIGATIONS--HOW THE PEOPLE PROSPERED--THE SOLUTION OF THE MYSTERY.

  Mr. Parker had good reason for exultation. He had in his possessiontestimony which exposed and completely defeated the wretched littleconspiracy organized against him by Smiley.

  "It was a very easy thing to settle this business," said Bob. "Iexplained the matter to the members of our firm, and they not only gaveme a letter containing very strong expressions of confidence in me anddenouncing Stonebury as a wholly untrustworthy and disreputable person,but they insisted that I should make Stonebury confess. Accordingly, amember of the firm accompanied me while I hunted him up. We found thathe had a clerkship in one of the municipal offices, and we called to seehim. He turned absolutely white when he saw me, and looked as if hewould like to beat a retreat. But we went at him, and threatened thatif he did not acknowledge in writing that he had maligned me we wouldprosecute him for the theft committed while he was engaged at the store,and have him ousted from his present position.

  "He came down at once, and began to excuse his conduct upon the groundthat Smiley had compelled him to do as he did. Then he made a writtenconfession that his statements concerning me were lies, and that he wasthe real author of the letter which professed to come from Rev. Dr.Dewey. Here it is--here are both letters; and I propose to enlighten theMagruder intellect with them this very night."

  "Wouldn't it be better to wait until to-morrow? It is rather late now."

  "No, sir. I intend to settle the affair finally and for ever before I goto bed. I have been waiting long enough. Now I am going to enjoy myvictory without further delay. Let's go around there at once."

  So Bob and I started for the Magruder mansion; and when we reached thestreet, he strode along at such a rapid gait that I could hardly keep upwith him. As we approached the house I ventured to suggest that the dogmight perhaps be at large, in which event I thought I would ratherremain in the drug store on the other side of the street until hereturned.

  "I would go into the house," exclaimed Bob, "if there were a millionbloodhounds tearing around the front yard."

  "Well, I believe I wouldn't. I have less enthusiasm than you. I amgrowing old and cautious. A much smaller quantity of bloodhound wouldrestrain what little impetuosity I have. Only one vigorous bloodhoundstationed in that yard and betraying a disposition to exclude me woulddampen my ardor. I should go home at once."

  "Magruder's dog won't bite," said Bob. "He knows me well, and we needn'tbe a bit afraid of him."

  "Very well, I will run the risk; but if any accident occurs, I shallblame you for it. I would rather you should lose your lady-love thanthat I should be deprived of the use of my legs."

  "And, of course, I wouldn't. But come along, and never mind the dog."

  As we entered the gate the dog was there, and he followed us upon theporch, still manifesting intense eagerness to sniff our trowsers. It isremarkable with what carefulness and steadiness a man walks under suchcircumstances. I would not have made a sudden jump or a quick movementof any kind for a valuable consideration.

  When we entered the house, Mr. Magruder met us, and we went with himinto the library, where Mrs. Magruder was sitting with a book in herhand. We obtained a glimpse of Bessie as she vanished through the otherdoor into the next room; and Bob seemed to feel a little disappointedthat she had not remained. Mr. Magruder began the conversation:

  "Well, Mr. Parker, I trust you have been successful in your efforts?"

  "Yes, sir," replied Bob. "I have accomplished all that I hoped for. Ihave, I think, procured evidence which will vindicate me completely andprove that I have been grossly slandered."

  "I hope this is the case," said Mr. Magruder. "What is the nature ofyour--"

  "Here are two letters. This one is from one of my employers. The otheris written by Samuel Stonebury, a man whose name at least is known toyou."

  Magruder took the papers and read them aloud, so that his wife mightobtain the information supplied by them. Then, as he slowly folded themup, he said:

  "Mr. Parker, this does indeed seem to be conclusive. I blame myself verymuch for having reposed confidence in Smiley and in his villainousfriend, but more than all because I treated you as if you were guiltybefore I heard you in your own defence. I owe you a very humble apology,sir, and I now make it. I hope you will forgive me;" and Magruderextended his hand.

  "I believed in you from the first," said Mrs. Magruder.

  "And I thank you for it," replied Bob.

  "I suppose Bessie might as well come in now, my dear," said Mr.Magruder.

  "Certainly," replied his wife, and she called Bessie.

  Bessie had evidently been listening upon the other side of the door, forshe entered instantly, with her smiling face rosy with blushes. Bobmerely took her hand, and stood by her looking as if he would like toindulge in a tenderer demonstration. Then I announced my intention to gohome, and as I did so Bob said he believed he would stay a littlelonger. Mr. and Mrs. Magruder came out with me into the hall to saygood-bye, and as the library-door closed I thought I heard the sound ofa kiss. I hope the old people went into the parlor or retired to bedafter my departure. There had been a cruel separation of the two lovers,and a good deal of genuine suffering, at least upon Bessie's part, andit was but fair that they should have a chance to enjoy to the veryutmost, without the intrusion of another person, the bliss of thatreunion.

  Upon the day following this reconciliation Smiley was in town, and hecalled at Magruder's. The old gentleman saw him coming, and met him atthe door. In reply to Smiley's salutation Magruder looked sternly athim, and after telling him that his villainy had been exposed, theindignant man ordered the lieutenant to leave his house and never toenter it again. Smiley turned upon his heel and slunk away. We haveprobably seen the last of him; and just as he has disappeared we havelearned that he is likely to be cashiered from the army for bad conduct.His brother officers at the fort have discovered his true character justas it has been revealed to us.

  * * * * *

  This rambling narrative would not deserve to be received as a faithfulrecord of events that have occurred in our neighborhood if it shouldfail to include an account of the extraordinary circumstances attendingwhat is known here as "The Great Cooley Inquest." The story of thatremarkable business must be given even if it shall be introduced withabruptness.

  My neighbor William Cooley had a brother named Thomas, who lived at aplace called Vandyke, in New Castle county. Thomas Cooley was in somerespects a very remarkable man. He was gifted with genius, but it wasgenius of an impracticable kind. He was an inventor, and during thelater years of his life he devoted all his time to the work ofconstructing surprising machines which would never do anything when theywere constructed.

  Down at the patent-office they got so at last that when a new model andspecifications would come along from Cooley, the commissioner and clerkswould grant him a patent on the spot, for they knew, from a rich andgenerous experience, that when Cooley invented anything it was perfectlycertain to be unlike any other contrivance ever conceived by the mind offallen man; and they were aware, at any rate, that nobody who was saneenough to be at large would ever want to interfere with Cooley'sexclusive right to pin together such a bewildering and useless lot ofcranks and axles and wheels. I think Cooley had about two hundredpatents of various kinds; and besides the machines and dodges thusprotected by the law, he owned scores of others which were never heardof in Washington or anywhere else but at Cooley's home.

  Cooley had a kind of "den" of his own in the garret. He used to shuthimself up in this for hours together while he perfected his inventionsor conducted his chemical investigations. His last idea was that hecould put together a compound which would rule gunpowder out of themarket, and make the destruction of ar
mies and navies comparativelyeasy. And so, for a time, Mrs. Cooley, while bustling about in thevicinity of the den, instead of hearing the buzz and hum of wheels andthe click of the hammer, would sniff terrific smells, evolved by theirrepressible Cooley from the contents of his laboratory. And one daythere came a fearful explosion. The roof was torn off and reduced tosplinters, and Thomas Cooley had disappeared.

  Vandyke, as I have said, is in New Castle county, Delaware, but it isalso close to the boundary line between Delaware and the counties ofCecil and Kent, in Maryland.

  And so it was not surprising when, a few minutes after the explosion,persons in all three of the counties perceived fragments of ademoralized and disintegrated human being tumbling from the air. Thepieces of the unhappy victim of the disaster were unevenly distributedbetween New Castle, Cecil and Kent. The first named got twelve of thefragments. There were persons who thought Cooley might have showed evengreater partiality for his own county, but I do not blame him; he was ina measure controlled by circumstances.

  I think the friends of the coroner complained with greatest bitterness.He was an enthusiastic coroner. He had been known, when one of Dr.Tobias Jones's relatives returned from Egypt with a mummy embalmedfifteen hundred years before the Christian era, to seize that ancientsubject of Pharaoh and summon a jury, and sit upon it, and brood over itand think. And it is rumored that he put that jury up to bringing in averdict, "The death of the deceased ensued from cause or causes unknown,at the hands of persons also unknown." His enemies at the next electionopenly asserted that he charged the county with the usual fee, withcompound interest from the time of Moses.

  So of course when Thomas Cooley went up, _he_ wasn't sorry; and the moreCooley was scattered over New Castle county, the more serene and affablethe coroner felt. When he had selected his jury and looked around him alittle in order to command the situation, he perceived that Cooley hadput into his hands a tolerably good thing. The coroner spent the nextthree days holding an inquest upon each of the twelve fragments of thedeceased. He empaneled a new jury every time, and then proceededcautiously and deliberately in each case.

  There was by no means complete unanimity of opinion. The first jurydecided that "the deceased met his death by being struck by somethingsudden." The second one advanced the theory that "Thomas Cooley wassurreptitiously and insidiously blowed apart." The others threw outsuggestions respecting the probability that the trouble came fromCooley's well-known weakness for flying machines, or from his beinglifted out and cut up by some kind of a hurricane. Once the jury decidednot to bring in a verdict, but merely to pass resolutions of regret.

  And the coroner would sit there over the particular piece of Cooley inquestion, and smile and permit these manifestations of generous feelingto have full play. It didn't perplex _him_ that all the verdictsdiffered. "Truth," he remarked to a friend, "is well enough. But asCooley is certainly dead, what's the odds if we can't agree as to whatkilled him? Let us collect our fees and yield with Christian resignationto destiny."

  It was always interesting to me to hear that coroner converse upon thesubject of resignation. He would rather have died than to have resignedwhile any of the Cooleys were in town inventing explosive compounds.

  The Cecil county coroner discovered six pieces of the deceased withinhis jurisdiction, but his pride would not permit him to yield thesupremacy in such a matter to his rival over the line. The New Castleman had twelve inquests, and so would he, with more besides. And hisjuries used to go out and consult and come in after a while with amajority report, declaring, perhaps, that deceased was killed by foolingwith some sort of a gun, and a minority report insisting that he hadbeen murdered and dissected by a medical student or students unknown.

  And then the coroner would disband the inquest and drum up a fresh jury,which would also disagree, until out of those six fractions of poor oldCooley the coroner got thirty-seven deliberations, with the attendantfees. And every time the doctors would testify that _post-mortem_examinations revealed the fact that the inside of the deceased wascrammed with fragments of the Latin language; and invariably the jurorswould sit there and try to look as if they understood those terms,although a dim impression prevailed most of the time that the physicianswere indulging recklessly in profanity.

  And when a relative of Cooley's testified before the thirty-seventh jurythat "Thomas Cooley was a man of marked idiosyncrasies, and his brainwas always excited by his irresistible fondness for chimeras of variouskinds," the jury looked solemn and immediately brought in a verdict that"death was caused by idiosyncrasies forming on his brain in consequenceof excessive indulgence in chimeras, thus supplying an awful warning tothe young to refrain from the use of that and other intoxicatingbeverages."

  Only two pieces fell in Kent county, but the coroner was animated byeven greater professional enthusiasm than his neighbors across theborder. He spent the entire season over as much of Cooley as he couldreach. All his juries but one disagreed, and he had eighty-four. Thesixth would have been unanimous but for an obstinate man namedSelfridge. All the others were for a verdict of mysterious butchery, butSelfridge insisted upon attributing the disaster to nitro-glycerine. Soearnest was he that he fought over the subject with a fellow-jurymannamed Smith; and he held Smith down and remonstrated with him, andshowed him the matter in different lights, and bit his nose to convinceSmith that the nitro-glycerine hypothesis was correct. And when thejury was dismissed, Selfridge, true to his solemn convictions, carriedthe war into the papers, and published an obituary poem entitled "AMonody on the Death of Thomas Cooley," in which he presented his viewsin this fashion:

  "When Cooley got his glycerine all properly adjusted, He knocked it unexpectedly, and suddenly it busted; And when it reached old Thomas C., he got up quick and dusted, And left his wife and family disheartened and disgusted."

  It was discovered that one of the bones of the deceased had fallendirectly across the boundary line between Cecil and Kent. As soon as thefact was reported, the coroner of Kent rallied a jury upon his end; andjust as the proceedings were about to begin, the Cecil coroner arrivedwith a jury for the purpose of attending to his share of the work. Whilethe authorities of Kent mused at one end of the bone, the jurymen ofCecil reflected at the other end, and the result was that each broughtin an entirely different verdict. But they were unanimous on thequestion of the collection of fees.

  In all there were thirteen or fourteen conflicting verdicts rendered,and so some uncertainty prevailed as to the precise cause of Cooley'sdeath. Men's minds were unsettled, and their conclusions weredemoralized, in the presence of so much official authority of anindecisive kind. But nobody mourned over these differences. They were ablessing for the people of the counties. Almost every man in theneighborhood had had a turn at Cooley's remains, and some of them hadserved on the juries six or seven times. The farmers all bought newmowing-machines that spring with their fees. The doctors collected moremoney for _post-mortem_ examinations than they would have done in a timeof an epidemic of small-pox and sudden death. People fixed up theirhouses and paid off mortgages and laid in their pork and started grocerystores and gave hops out of the profits of Cooley's explosion. And therewere men who cherished a wish that Cooley could be put together againand exploded once a mouth for the next decade. But that of course wasimpossible.

  One day, when the tide of prosperity was at its height, the widow Cooleyperceived a wagon driving up to her door. The man within the vehicledismounted, and unloaded four pieces of iron pipe sixty feet long.Presently another wagon arrived, and this driver also unloaded the samequantity of pipe. Then a third driver arrived and did the same thing.Then a fourth came, and Mrs. Cooley saw a man in it with a queer-lookingobject by him. It proved to be Thomas Cooley himself. Thomas had been upto the city at a machine-shop getting up a working model of a new kindof a patent duplex elliptic artesian pump; and now he was home again.The remains scattered over the counties were--so Cooley said--merely alot of beef with which he had been trying to make a new kind of pat
entportable soup and an improved imperishable army sausage; and theexplosion, he thought, must have been caused by spontaneous combustion.

  Thomas Cooley would have been happy, after all, but for onething--everybody outside of his own family refused to recognize him as aliving man. If he was willing to move about in the community in thecharacter of an unburied corpse, the people would agree not to interfereand not to insist upon his burial; but that was as far as they could goconscientiously. Their duty to society, their obligations to the law,compelled them to reject the idea that he was anything more thaninanimate remains. He was officially dead. The fact had been declaredunder oath by hundreds of jurymen, and it was registered in the recordsof two States and three counties. The testimony was overwhelminglyagainst him. To admit that he was still alive would be dangerous, itwould be revolutionary. The foundations of society would be shaken, themajesty of the law would suffer insult, the fabric of republicangovernment would be undermined. If a being who was legally only a merecadaver was to be permitted to strut out into daylight, and to urgeincendiary theories about the condition of his vital spark, nothingwould be safe; there would be no guarantee that the cemeteries would notunload, and that all of the departed would not be crowding out andwanting to vote. Besides, if it was admitted that Cooley was yetalive, all the money that had been earned by the jurymen, all the feesthat had been charged by the coroners, would have to be returned to thecounty treasuries. The people were aghast at the thought. The coronersentered into a solemn compact to persist in ignoring Cooley or to regardhim merely as an absurd and very indelicate goblin who had behaved in amanner wholly unworthy of a ghost with gentlemanly instincts. Theydeclared publicly that they could not admit that Cooley was alive unlessthere should be a general resurrection in the States of Delaware andMaryland, and until that time arrived, they considered that the bestthing Cooley could do would be to select a sepulchre somewhere and creepinto it and behave.

  * * * * *

  I do not know that I can find a better place than this to insert abundle of rhymes which I have at hand. The wholesale slaughter in whichthe hero and heroine indulge seems to entitle the poem to associationwith the three coroners above mentioned. And I may venture to remarkthat not one of the officials in question will read the lines without afeeling of profound regret that such magnificent opportunities forinquests are hardly likely to be presented in Maryland and Delaware. OurNew Castle coroner would accumulate millions in the shape of fees if hecould have the privilege of summoning juries to investigate such abutchery as this.

  A HINDOO LEGEND.

  There was a Hindoo maiden once on India's coral strand Who had some forty suitors for her coffee-colored hand. Her father was a Brahmin of aristocratic caste Who much internal revenue in dry goods had amassed.

  These lovers thought it would be nice the dusky maid to wed, And spend the rupees lavishly when her papa was dead. But she turned up her nose at them--a very pretty pug-- Because clandestinely she loved an elegant young Thug.

  This Thug, in his profession, was a very active man; He strangled eighty men the year to practice he began. But as the maiden's father had no taste for art at all, He foolishly disliked the Thug, and wouldn't let him call.

  And then she loved him better still, as always is the case, And so she met him daily at a certain trysting-place. Hand in hand amid the verdant fields deliciously they strayed, Now culling flowers, now strangling little children as they played.

  And this young Thug, one afternoon, he kissed the maid and said, "It really seems to me, my dear, high time that we should wed. And as your guardians to me so seriously object, 'Twould be as well to kill them; I can do it, I expect."

  Then said the lovely maiden, with a sweet, confiding smile: "I go for chopping of them up in most effectual style. And as my marriage simply on my papa's death depends, Why, just for fun we'll butcher all my relatives and friends."

  The Thug procured a hatchet, and the maiden got a knife; They cut and slashed the Brahmin till he was bereft of life; Then they seized the loving mother, though she desperately fought, And crunched her aged bones beneath the car of Juggernaut.

  A consecrated lasso, thrown with admirable skill, Swiftly roped her brother in and choked him 'gainst his will. Her sister's fair young form was hooked upon the sacred swing; And flying 'round until she died, she screamed like everything.

  The maiden jabbed the knife into the colored coachman's brain, And stabbed her uncle William and her aunt Matilda Jane. The Thug he steeped his hatchet in the chambermaiden's gore, And with a skewer pinned the cook against the cellar door.

  The maiden cut her grandpa up in little tiny bits, And scared her grandma so she died in epileptic fits. The dry nurse with the clothes-line was serenely strangled, while They tossed the little baby to the sacred crocodile.

  And when the fuss was over, said the maiden to the Thug: "You'd better have a hole within the cemetery dug; And let the undertaker take extraordinary pains To decently inter this lot of mangled-up remains."

  And when the usual bitter tears were at the funeral shed, The lovers to the temple went, in order to be wed. The priest had barbecued a man that day for sacrifice; They cooked him with the cracklin' on; with gravy brown and nice.

  The chief priest asked the maiden, when the services began, If her papa had said she might annex this fine young man? "Oh no," she said, "my loving wish he foolishly withstood, So him and all the family we slaughtered in cold blood."

  "You shock me!" said the pious priest; "your conduct makes me sad; You never learned at Sunday-school to be so awful bad. I've told you often, when you killed a person anywhere, To bring the body to that old nine-headed idol there;

  "The great Vishnu is suffering for victims every day, And here you go and cut them up and throw the bones away! Extravagance is sinful; I must really put it down; I've half a mind to pull the string and make the idol frown.

  "I must punish you with rigor; and I order that you two Instead of getting married shall severest penance do." So on a piece of paper then he scribbled a brief word; The lovers as they left, of course, felt perfectly absurd.

  The Thug then read the order o'er, and bursting into tears, He said, "This paper realizes my unpleasant fears. Upon my word, my sweetest one, it really chills my blood; I've got to suffocate you in the Ganges' holy mud."

  And so he sadly led her down unto the river's bank, And like a stone into the cold, religious slime she sank. And there she stuck the livelong day, and all the following night. Until an alligator came and ate her at a bite.

  The Thug he felt exceeding hurt at her untimely fate, But his, though not so dreadful, was not nice, at any rate. The priest, in his fierce anger, had condemned him, it appears, To stand alone upon one leg for forty-seven years!