The Best American Mystery Stories of the 19th Century

by Otto Penzler (ed)

  When I had finished reading this note I sat for a long while thinking hard. Then I examined the two jars. They were labeled “Cythyl.” One was full, the other nearly full. “The rest must be on the corpse of the Red Admiral,” I thought, “no matter if it is in a corked bottle—”

  I took all the things back to the chest, laid them carefully on the straw, and closed the lid. The gendarme sentinel at the gate saluted me respectfully as I crossed over to the Groix Inn. The inn was surrounded by an excited crowd, and the hallway was choked with gendarmes and peasants. On every side they greeted me cordially, announcing that the real murderer was caught; but I pushed by them without a word and ran upstairs to find Lys. She opened her door when I knocked and threw both arms about my neck. I took her to my breast and kissed her. After a moment I asked her if she would obey me no matter what I commanded, and she said she would, with a proud humility that touched me.

  “Then go at once to Yvette in St. Julien,” I said. “Ask her to harness the dog-cart and drive you to the convent in Quimperlé. Wait for me there. Will you do this without questioning me, my darling?”

  She raised her face to mine. “Kiss me,” she said innocently; the next moment she had vanished.

  I walked deliberately into the Purple Emperor’s room and peered into the gauze-covered box which held the chrysalis of Apatura Iris. It was as I expected. The chrysalis was empty and transparent, and a great crack ran down the middle of its back, but, on the netting inside the box, a magnificent butterfly slowly waved its burnished purple wings; for the chrysalis had given up its silent tenant, the butterfly symbol of immortality. Then a great fear fell upon me. I know now that it was the fear of the Black Priest, but neither then nor for years after did I know that the Black Priest had ever lived on earth. As I bent over the box I heard a confused murmur outside the house which ended in a furious shout of “Parricide!” and I heard the gendarmes ride away behind a wagon which rattled sharply on the flinty highway. I went to the window. In the wagon sat Yves Terrec, bound and wild-eyed, two gendarmes at either side of him, and all around the wagon rode mounted gendarmes whose bared sabers scarcely kept the crowd away.

  “Parricide!” they howled. “Let him die!”

  I stepped back and opened the gauze-covered box. Very gently but firmly I took the splendid butterfly by its closed fore wings and lifted it unharmed between my thumb and forefinger. Then, holding it concealed behind my back, I went down into the café.

  Of all the crowd that had filled it, shouting for the death of Yves Terrec, only three persons remained seated in front of the huge empty fireplace. They were the Brigadier Durand, Max Fortin, the chemist of Quimperlé, and the Purple Emperor. The latter looked abashed when I entered, but I paid no attention to him and walked straight to the chemist.

  “Monsieur Fortin,” I said, “do you know much about hydrocarbons?”

  “They are my specialty,” he said, astonished.

  “Have you ever heard of such thing as cythyl?”

  “Schweineri’s cythyl? Oh, yes! We use it in perfumery.”

  “Good!” I said. “Has it an odor?”

  “No—and yes. One is always aware of its presence, but nobody can affirm it has an odor. It is curious,” he continued, looking at me, “it is very curious you should have asked me that, for all day I have been imagining I detected the presence of cythyl.”

  “Do you imagine so now?” I asked.

  “Yes, more than ever.”

  I sprang to the front door and tossed out the butterfly. The splendid creature beat the air for a moment, flitted uncertainly hither and thither, and then, to my astonishment, sailed majestically back into the café and alighted on the hearthstone. For a moment I was nonplussed, but when my eyes rested on the Purple Emperor I comprehended in a flash.

  “Lift that hearthstone!” I cried to the Brigadier Durand; “pry it up with your scabbard!”

  The Purple Emperor suddenly fell forward in his chair, his face ghastly white, his jaw loose with terror.

  “What is cythyl?” I shouted, seizing him by the arm; but he plunged heavily from his chair, face downward on the floor, and at the moment a cry from the chemist made me turn. There stood the Brigadier Durand, one hand supporting the hearthstone, one hand raised in horror. There stood Max Fortin, the chemist, rigid with excitement, and below, in the hollow bed where the hearthstone had rested, lay a crushed mass of bleeding human flesh, from the midst of which stared a cheap glass eye. I seized the Purple Emperor and dragged him to his feet.

  “Look!” I cried; “look at your old friend, the Red Admiral!” but he only smiled in a vacant way, and rolled his head muttering, “Bait for butterflies! Cythyl! Oh, no, no, no! You can’t do it, Admiral, d’ye see. I alone own the Purple Emperor! I alone am the Purple Emperor!”

  And the same carriage that bore me to Quimperlé to claim my bride, carried him to Quimper, gagged and bound, a foaming, howling lunatic.

  This, then, is the story of the Purple Emperor. I might tell you a pleasanter story if I chose; but concerning the fish that I had hold of, whether it was a salmon, a grilse, or a sea-trout, I may not say, because I have promised Lys, and she has promised me, that no power on earth shall wring from our lips the mortifying confession that the fish escaped.

  1898

  EDWARD BELLAMY

  At Pinney’s Ranch

  The second best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century (after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin) was Looking Backward (1888), by EDWARD BELLAMY (1850–1898). It remains charmingly readable today, as Bellamy’s style was simple, straightforward, and idealistic. Although it is frequently described as a Utopian socialist work, its espousal of pure state capitalism with complete nationalization of all private industry has more in common with a totalitarian state similar to fascism. Bellamy claimed to have written Looking Backward as a depiction of “enlightened self-interest and wholesale common sense,” a “literary fantasy, a fairy tale of social felicity” rather than a call to political activism, but it did, in fact, serve as a rallying point for groups called Bellamy Clubs, which led to the Nationalist Party, eventually drawing the author himself to the cause. Looking Backward sold more than a million copies before the turn of the century. Bellamy was encouraged to write a sequel and did, a decade later, but Equality (1897) was more a sociological tract than a novel.

  Bellamy was involved in several careers, passing the bar exam (although never practicing), then becoming a newspaper editor, but he wanted to be a writer and in 1873 began a magazine serial, The Duke of Stockbridge. He never completed the novel; it was published posthumously with an ending produced by a different author. Two early novels, Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process (1880) and Miss Ludington’s Sister (1884), were concerned with psychic phenomena, in which he was extremely interested, as the present story illustrates. Curiously, another of his short stories, “Two Days’ Solitary Imprisonment,” has an almost identical premise to that of “At Pinney’s Ranch,” with both of the protagonists reeling with guilt about being unfairly suspected of having committed a murder. The latter story was selected for this collection as it is slightly more believable than the former—though barely.

  “At Pinney’s Ranch” was first published in the author’s collection The Blindman’s World and Other Stories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1898).

  ***

  JOHN LANSING FIRST met Mary Hollister at the house of his friend Pinney, whose wife was her sister. She had soft gray eyes, a pretty color in her cheeks, rosy lips, and a charming figure. In the course of the evening somebody suggested mind-reading as a pastime, and Lansing, who had some powers, or supposed powers, in that direction, although he laughed at them himself, experimented in turn with the ladies. He failed with nearly every subject until it came Mary Hollister’s turn. As she placed her soft palm in his, closed her eyes, and gave herself up to his influence, he knew that he should succeed with her, and so he did. She proved a remarkably sympathetic subject, and Lansing was himself surprised, a
nd the spectators fairly thrilled, by the feats he was able to perform by her aid. After that evening he met her often, and there was more equally remarkable mind-reading; and then mind-reading was dropped for heart-reading, and the old, old story they read in each other’s hearts had more fascination for them than the new science. Having once discovered that their hearts beat in unison, they took no more interest in the relation of their minds.

  The action proper of this story begins four years after their marriage, with a very shocking event,—nothing less than the murder of Austin Flint, who was found dead one morning in the house in which he lived alone. Lansing had no hand in the deed, but he might almost as well have had; for, while absolutely guiltless, he was caught in one of those nets of circumstance which no foresight can avoid, whereby innocent men are sometimes snared helplessly, and delivered over to a horrid death. There had been a misunderstanding between him and the dead man, and only a couple of days before the murder, they had exchanged blows on the street. When Flint was found dead, in the lack of any other clue, people thought of Lansing. He realized that this was so, and remained silent as to a fact which otherwise he would have testified to at the inquest, but which he feared might now imperil him. He had been at Austin Flint’s house the night of the murder, and might have committed it, so far as opportunity was concerned. In reality, the motive of his visit was anything but murderous. Deeply chagrined by the scandal of the fight, he had gone to Flint to apologize, and to make up their quarrel. But he knew very well that nobody would believe that this was his true object in seeking his enemy secretly by night, while the admission of the visit would complete a circumstantial evidence against him stronger than had often hanged men. He believed that no one but the dead man knew of the call, and that it would never be found out. He had not told his wife of it at the time, and still less afterward, on account of the anxiety she would feel at his position.

  Two weeks passed, and he was beginning to breathe freely in the assurance of safety, when, like a thunderbolt from a cloud that seems to have passed over, the catastrophe came. A friend met him on the street one day, and warned him to escape while he could. It appeared that he had been seen to enter Flint’s house that night. His concealment of the fact had been accepted as corroborating evidence of his guilt, and the police, who had shadowed him from the first, might arrest him at any moment. The conviction that he was guilty, which the friend who told him this evidently had, was a terrible comment on the desperateness of his position. He walked home as in a dream. His wife had gone out to a neighbor’s. His little boy came to him, and clambered on his knee. “Papa, what makes your face so wet?” he asked, for there were great drops on his forehead. Then his wife came in, her face white, her eyes full of horror. “Oh, John!” she exclaimed. “They say you were at Mr. Flint’s that night, and they are going to arrest you. Oh, John, what does it mean? Why don’t you speak? I shall go mad, if you do not speak. You were not there! Tell me that you were not there!” The ghastly face he raised to hers might well have seemed to confess everything. At least she seemed to take it so, and in a fit of hysterical weeping sank to the floor, and buried her face in her hands upon a chair. The children, alarmed at the scene, began to cry. It was growing dark, and as he looked out of the window, Lansing saw an officer and a number of other persons approaching the house. They were coming to arrest him. Animal terror, the instinct of self-preservation, seized upon his faculties, stunned and demoralized as he was by the suddenness with which this calamity had come upon him. He opened the door and fled, with a score of men and boys yelling in pursuit. He ran wildly, blindly, making incredible leaps and bounds over obstacles. As men sometimes do in nightmares, he argued with himself, as he ran, whether this could possibly be a waking experience, and inclined to think that it could not. It must be a dream. It was too fantastically horrible to be anything else.

  Presently he saw just before him the eddying, swirling current of the river, swollen by a freshet. Still half convinced that he was in a nightmare, and, if he could but shake it off, should awake in his warm bed, he plunged headlong in, and was at once swirled out of sight of his pursuers beneath the darkening sky. A blow from a floating object caused him to throw up his arms, and, clutching something solid, he clambered upon a shed carried away by the freshet from an up-river farm. All night he drifted with the swift current, and in the morning landed in safety thirty miles below the village from which he had fled for life.

  So John Lansing, for no fault whatever except an error of judgment, if even it was that, was banished from home, and separated from his family almost as hopelessly as if he were dead. To return would be to meet an accusation of murder to which his flight had added overwhelming weight. To write to his wife might be to put the officers of the law, who doubtless watched her closely, upon his scent.

  Under an assumed name he made his way to the far West, and, joining the rush to the silver mines of Colorado, was among the lucky ones. At the end of three years he was a rich man. What he had made the money for, he could not tell, except that the engrossment of the struggle had helped him to forget his wretchedness. Not that he ever did forget it. His wife and babies, from whose embraces he had been so suddenly torn, were always in his thoughts. Above all, he could not forget the look of horror in his wife’s eyes in that last terrible scene. To see her again, and convince her, if not others, that he was innocent, was a need which so grew upon him that, at the end of three years, he determined to take his life in his hand and return home openly. This life of exile was not worth living.

  One day, in the course of setting his affairs in order for his return, he was visiting a mining camp remote from the settlements, when a voice addressed him by his old name, and looking around he saw Pinney. The latter’s first words, as soon as his astonishment and delight had found some expression, assured Lansing that he was no longer in danger. The murderer of Austin Flint had been discovered, convicted, and hanged two years previous. As for Lansing, it had been taken for granted that he was drowned when he leaped into the river, and there had been no further search for him. His wife had been broken-hearted ever since, but she and the children were otherwise well, according to the last letters received by Pinney, who, with his wife, had moved out to Colorado a year previous.

  Of course Lansing’s only idea now was to get home as fast as steam could carry him; but they were one hundred miles from the railroad, and the only communication was by stage. It would get up from the railroad the next day, and go back the following morning. Pinney took Lansing out to his ranch, some miles from the mining camp, to pass the interval. The first thing he asked Mrs. Pinney was if she had a photograph of his wife. When she brought him one, he durst not look at it before his hosts. Not till he had gone to his room and locked the door did he trust himself to see again the face of his beloved Mary.

  That evening Mrs. Pinney told him how his wife and children had fared in his absence. Her father had helped them at first, but after his death Mary had depended upon needlework for support, finding it hard to make the two ends meet.

  Lansing groaned at hearing this, but Mrs. Pinney comforted him. It was well worth while having troubles, she said, if they could be made up to one, as all Mary’s would be to her when she saw her husband.

  The upcoming stage brought the mail, and next day Pinney rode into camp to get his weekly newspaper, and engage a passage down the next morning for Lansing. The day dragged terribly to the latter, who stayed at the ranch. He was quite unfit for any social purpose, as Mrs. Pinney, to whom a guest in that lonely place was a rare treat, found to her sorrow, though indeed she could not blame him for being poor company. He passed hours, locked in his room, brooding over Mary’s picture. The rest of the day he spent wandering about the place, smiling and talking to himself like an imbecile, as he dreamed of the happiness so soon to crown his trials. If he could have put himself in communication with Mary by telegraph during this period of waiting, it would have been easier to get through, but the nearest telegraph station was
at the railroad. In the afternoon he saddled a horse and rode about the country, thus disposing of a couple of hours.

  When he came back to the house, he saw that Pinney had returned, for his horse was tethered to a post of the front piazza. The doors and windows of the living-room were open, and as he reached the front door, he heard Pinney and his wife talking in agitated tones.

  “Oh, how could God let such an awful thing happen?” she was exclaiming, in a voice broken by hysterical sobbing. “I’m sure there was never anything half so horrible before. Just as John was coming home to her, and she worshiping him so, and he her! Oh, it will kill him! Who is going to tell him? Who can tell him?”

  “He must not be told to-day,” said Pinney’s voice. “We must keep it from him at least for to-day.”

  Lansing entered the room. “Is she dead?” he asked quietly. He could not doubt, from what he had overheard, that she was.