_What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Fifth Gift of the Emir._
"I am at a loss to understand," said Mr. Middleton, "why you haveentitled the narration you have just related, 'The Pleasant Adventuresof Dr. McDill.' For to my mind, they seemed anything but pleasantadventures."
"How so?" asked the emir. "Is it not pleasant to thwart themachinations and defeat the evil intentions of the villains such ascomposed the confederacy that sought the doctor's life? Does there notreside in mankind a sense of justice which rejoices at seeing metedout to wrong-doers the deserts of their crimes?"
To which Mr. Middleton replying with a nod of thoughtful assent, aftera proper period of rumination upon the words of the emir, thataccomplished ruler continued:
"Despite the boasted protection of the law, how often is a mancompelled to rely for his protection upon his own prowess, skill oraddress. There are many occasions when right under the nose of thepolice, one saves himself by the resort to physical strength, weapons,or the use of a cajoling tongue. Theoretically, Dr. McDill was amplyprotected by the mantle of the law. In reality, it was man to man asmuch as if he had met his foes in the Arabian desert, with none buthimself and them and the vultures. Do you go armed?"
"No," replied Mr. Middleton, with a flippant smile; "but I can gopretty fast, and that has heretofore done as well as going armed."
"Young man," said the emir, sternly, "a bullet can outstrip yourfleetest footsteps. There may never be but one occasion when you willneed a weapon, but on that occasion the possession of the means ofprotection may spell the difference between life and life."
Hardly had he uttered them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forwardand pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly,such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one setin authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor.Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement ofthe wisdom of what the emir had said, Mr. Middleton began to makepreparations to go. But Prince Achmed bade him wait, and saying a fewwords to Mesrour in the Arabic language, the blackamore brought to hima pair of pistols of a formidable aspect. In sooth, one could hardlytell whether they ought to be called pistols, or culverins. In theshape of the stocks alone could anyone detect that they were pistols.The bore of each was more than an inch in diameter, and the octagonalbarrels of thick steel, heavily inlaid with silver, were a foot and ahalf long. The handles, which were in proportion to the barrels and solong that four hands could grasp them, were so completely covered withan inlay of pearl that no wood was visible. Taking one of them, theemir rammed home a great load of powder, upon which he placed ahandful of balls as large as marbles. Having served the secondlikewise, he handed the pair to Mr. Middleton.
"Take them. Protected by them, you need have little fear. But woebetide the man who stands in front of them, for so wide is thedistribution of their charge, that he must be a most indifferentmarksman who could not do execution with them."
Thanking the emir for the gift and the entertainment and instructionof his discourse, Mr. Middleton departed. Impressed though he had beenby Prince Achmed's counsel and by the lesson to be derived from therecital of the experiences of Dr. McDill, Mr. Middleton did not carrythe pistols as he went about his daily vocation. It was impossible toso bestow them about his garments that they did not cause large andunsightly protuberances and to carry them openly was not to be thoughtof. Their weight, too, was so great that it was burdensome to carrythem in any manner. Coming into his room unexpectedly in the middle ofthe forenoon of the Thursday following the acquisition of the weapons,he surprised Hilda Svenson, maid of all work, in the act of examiningone of them, which she had extracted from the place where they layconcealed in the lower bureau drawer beneath a pile of underclothing.With a start of guilty surprise, Hilda let the pistol fall to thefloor. Fortunately it did not go off, but nonetheless was he convincedthat he ought to dispose of the two weapons, for any day Hilda mightshoot herself with one, while on the weekly sheet changing day, Mrs.Leschinger, the landlady, might shoot herself with the other. Therewas no place in the room where he could conceal them from thepainstaking investigations of Hilda and Mrs. Leschinger, and theexpedient of extracting the charges not occurring to him, he felt thatit was clearly his duty to remove the lives of the two women fromjeopardy by disposing of the pistols. He was in truth pained at thenecessity of parting with the gifts which the emir had made with suchsolicitude for his welfare and as some assuagement to this regret hesought to dispose of them as profitably as possible. With this end inview, he made an appointment for a private audience after hours withMr. Sidney Kuppenheimer, who conducted a large loan bank on MadisonStreet and was reputed a connoisseur and admirer of all kinds ofcurios.
On the evening for which he had made the appointment, he set forth,intending to make an early and short call upon his friend ChauncyStackelberg and wife, before repairing to Mr. Kuppenheimer's place ofbusiness. But such was the engaging quality of the conversation of thenewly married couple, abounding both in humor and good sense, and sointerested was he in hearing of the haps and mishaps of married life,a state he hoped to enter as soon as fortune and the young lady ofEnglewood should be propitious, that he was unaware of the flight oftime until in the midst of a pause in the conversation, he heard thecathedral clock Mrs. Stackelberg's uncle had given her as a weddingpresent, solemnly tolling the hour of eleven. The hour Mr.Kuppenheimer had named was one hour agone. To have kept theappointment, he should have started two hours before.
Another half hour had flown before Mr. Middleton, having paused topartake of some chow-chow recently made by Mrs. Stackelberg and highlyrecommended by her liege, finally left the house, carrying a pistol ineither hand. The night was somewhat cloudy, but although there wasneither moon nor stars, it was much lighter than on some nights whenall the minor luminaries are ablaze, or the moon itself is aloft,shining in its first or last quarter, a phenomenon remarked upon by anable Italian scientist in the middle of the last century and by himattributed to some luminous quality that inheres in the cloudsthemselves. Mr. Middleton was walking along engrossed in thoughts ofthe scene of domestic bliss he had lately quitted and in dreams of theeven more delightful home he hoped to some day enjoy with the younglady of Englewood, when he suddenly became cognizant of fourindividuals a short distance away, comporting themselves in an unusualand peculiar manner. Cautiously approaching them as quietly aspossible, he perceived that it was two robbers despoiling two citizensof their valuables, one pair standing in the middle of the street, oneon the sidewalk, the citizens with their hands elevated above theirheads in a strained and uncomfortable attitude, while eachrobber--with back to him--was pointing a revolver with one hand andturning pockets inside out with the other.
With a resolution and celerity that astonished him, as he afterwardsdwelt upon it in retrospect, Mr. Middleton rushed silently upon thenearest robber, him in the street, and dealt him a terrible blow uponthe head with the barrel of a pistol. Without a sound, the robber sankto the earth, whereupon the citizen, whether he had lost his headthrough fear, or thought Mr. Middleton a new and more dangerousoutlaw, fled away like the wind. Snatching the bag of valuables in theunconscious thief's hands, Mr. Middleton made toward the other robber,who, to his astonishment, hissed without looking around:
"What did you let your man get away for, you fool? Try and makeyourself useful somehow. Hold this swag and cover the man, so I canhave both hands and get through quick."
Taking the valuables the robber handed him, Mr. Middleton withcalmness and deliberation placed them in his pockets, after which heplaced a muzzle of a pistol in the back of the robber's neck andsharply commanded:
"Hands up!"
Up went the robber's hands as if he were a jumping-jack jerked by astring, whereupon his late victim, doubtless animated by the sameemotions as those of the other citizens, fled away like the wind, butnot in silence, for at every jump he bellowed, "Thieves, murder,help!"
A window slammed up in the
house before which they were standing andthe glare of an electric bicycle lamp played full upon Mr. Middletonand his prisoner.
"I've got him," said Mr. Middleton, proudly.
"Got him! Got him!" gasped an astonished voice. "Well, of alleffrontery! Got him, you miserable thief? The police are coming andthey'll get you, and I can identify you, if they don't succeed innabbing you red-handed."
Shocked and almost paralyzed, Mr. Middleton turned to expostulate withthe misled householder, when the robber, seizing the opportunity, fledaway like the wind, bellowing at every jump, "Thieves, murder, help!"and as if aroused by the sound of his compatriot's voice, the thiefwho had been lying unconscious in the street all this while, arose andhastened away, somewhat unsteadily, it is true, yet at a considerabledegree of speed.
It did not require any extended reflective processes for Mr. Middletonto tell himself that if he waited for the police, he would be in avery bad plight, for he had the stolen property upon his person, thethieves had gone, and even if the victims were able to say he was notone of the two original thieves--which their disturbed state of mindmade most uncertain--they would be likely to declare him a thiefnotwithstanding, a charge which the stolen property on his personwould bear out. The police could now be heard down the street and thehouseholder was making the welkin ring with vociferous shouts. With asudden access of rage at this individual whose well-intended effortshad thwarted justice and might yet fasten crime upon innocence, Mr.Middleton pointed a pistol at the upper pane of the window where shonethe bicycle lamp. There was a roar that shook the air, followed by acrash of glass and the clatter of a dozen bullets upon the brick wallof the house, and a shriek of terror from the householder and thebicycle lamp instantly vanished. With a heart strangely at peace inthe midst of the dangers that encompassed him, Mr. Middleton sped upthe street, dashed through an alleyway, back for a block on the nextstreet in the direction he had just come, and thenceforth leisurelyand with an appearance of virtue he did not need to feign, made hisway home without molestation.
Upon examining the booty that had so strangely come into hispossession, Mr. Middleton was at a loss to think which were thegreater villains, those who had robbed, or those who had been robbed.One wallet contained five hundred and forty dollars in greenbacks andsome memoranda accompanying it showed that it was a corruption fund tobe used in bribing voters at an approaching election. The other walletcontained sixty dollars and a detailed plan for bribery, fraud, andintimidation which was to be carried out in one of the doubtful wards.There were also some silver coins, and two gold watches bearing nonames or marks that could identify their owners, but the detailed plancontained the name of the politician who had drawn it up and who wasto be benefited by its successful accomplishment. This was a clue byfollowing which Mr. Middleton might have found the parties who hadbeen robbed and return their property, but he was deterred from doingso by several considerations. The knowledge he had of the proposedfraud was exceedingly dangerous to the interests of one of thepolitical parties and to the personal interests of one of the bossesof that party. It would be clearly to their advantage to have Mr.Middleton jailed and so put where there would be no danger that hewould divulge the information in his possession. Besides this, themoney was to be used for corrupt purposes, would go into the hands ofevil men who would spend it evilly. Deprived of it, a thoroughly badman was less likely to be elected. For these moral and prudentialreasons, Mr. Middleton saw that it was plainly his duty to the publicand to himself to retain the money. The victims, bearing in mind thatthe recovery of the money by the police would also mean the discoveryof the incriminating documents and that any persecution of the robbersmight incite them to sell the documents to the opposite party, wouldbe very chary about doing or saying anything. But there was thehouseholder, who surely would tell his tale and who had an idea of Mr.Middleton's personal appearance. Accordingly, that excellent young mandisposed of the gold watches to one Isaac Fiscovitz on lower StateStreet, and with the results of the exchange purchased an entirely newsuit, new hat, and new shoes. The incriminating documents, he placedunder the carpet in his room against a time when he might see anopportunity to safely dispose of them to the pecuniary advantage ofhimself and to the discomfiture of the contemptible creature whosehandiwork they were.
He said nothing of these transactions when on the appointed evening heonce more sat in the presence of the urbane prince of the tribe ofAl-Yam. Having handed him a bowl of delicately flavored sherbet,Achmed began the narration of The Adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson.
The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton Page 9
