Roberts, walking up and down in great distress: “I can’t do it; I can’t do it. It’s very kind of you to think it all out for me, but” — struck by a sudden idea— “Willis, why shouldn’t you do it?”
Willis: “I?”
Roberts: “You are good at those things. You have so much aplomb, you know. You could carry it off, you know, first-rate.”
Willis, as if finding a certain fascination in the idea: “Well, I don’t know—”
Roberts: “And I could chime in on the laugh. I think I could do that if somebody else was doing the rest.”
Willis, after a moment of silent reflection: “I should like to do it. I should like to see how old Bemis would look when I played it on him. Roberts, I will do it. Not a word! I should like to do it. Now you go on and hurry up your toilet, old fellow; you needn’t mind me here. I’ll be rehearsing.”
Mrs. Roberts, knocking at the door, outside: “Edward, are you never coming?”
Roberts: “Yes, yes; I’ll be there in a minute, my dear.”
Willis: “Yes, he’ll be there. Run along back, and keep it going till we come. Roberts, I wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for this chance.”
Roberts: “I’m glad you like it.”
Willis: “Like it? Of course I do. Or, no! Hold on! Wait! It won’t do! No; you must take the leading part, and I’ll support you, and I’ll come in strong if you break down. That’s the way we have got to work it. You must make the start.”
Roberts: “Couldn’t you make it better, Willis? It’s your idea.”
Willis: “No; they’d be sure to suspect me, and they can’t suspect you of anything — you’re so innocent. The illusion will be complete.”
Roberts, very doubtfully: “Do you think so?” Willis: “Yes. Hurry up. Let me unbutton that collar for you.”
PART THIRD.
I. MRS. ROBERTS, DR. LAWTON, MRS. CRASHAW, MR. BEMIS, YOUNG MR. AND MRS. BEMIS.
MRS. ROBERTS, surrounded by her guests, and confronting from her sofa Mr. Bemis, who still remains sunken in his arm-chair, has apparently closed an exhaustive recital of the events which have ended in his presence there. She looks round with a mixed air of self-denial and self-satisfaction to read the admiration of her listeners in their sympathetic countenances.
Dr. Lawton, with an ironical sigh of profound impression: “Well, Mrs. Roberts, you are certainly the most lavishly hospitable of hostesses. Every one knows what delightful dinners you give; but these little dramatic episodes which you offer your guests, by way of appetizer, are certainly unique. Last year an elevator stuck in the shaft with half the company in it, and this year a highway robbery, its daring punishment and its reckless repetition — what the newspapers will call ‘ A Triple Mystery’ when it gets to them — and both victims among our commensals! Really, I don’t know what more we could ask of you, unless it were the foot-padded footpad himself as a commensal. If this sort of thing should become de rigueur in society generally, I don’t know what’s to become of people who haven’t your invention.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh, it’s all very well to make fun now, Dr. Lawton; but if you had been here when they first came in—”
Young Mrs. Bemis: “Yes, indeed, I think so too, Mrs. Roberts. If Mr. Bemis — Alfred, I mean — and papa hadn’t been with me when you came out there to prepare us, I don’t know what I should have done. I should certainly have died, or gone through the floor.” She looks fondly up into the face of her husband for approval, where he stands behind her chair, and furtively gives him her hand for pressure.
Young Mr. Bemis: “Somebody ought to write to the Curwens — Mrs. Curwen, that is — about it.” Mrs. Bemis, taking away her hand: “Oh yes, papa, do write!”
Lawton: “I will, my dear. Even Mrs. Curwen, dazzling away in another sphere — hemisphere — and surrounded by cardinals and all the other celestial lights there at Rome, will be proud to exploit this new evidence of American enterprise. I can fancy the effect she will produce with it.”
Mrs. Roberts: “And the Millers — what a shame they couldn’t come! How excited they would have been! — that is, Mrs. Miller. Is their baby very bad, Doctor?”
Lawton: “Well, vaccination is always a very serious thing — with a first child. I should say, from the way Mrs. Miller feels about it, that Miller wouldn’t be able to be out for a week to come yet.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh, how ridiculous you are, Doctor!”
Remis, rising feebly from his chair: “.Well, now that it’s all explained, Mrs. Roberts, I think I’d better go home; and if you’ll kindly have them telephone for a carriage—”
Mrs. Roberts: “No, indeed, Mr. Bemis! We shall not let you go. Why, the idea! You must stay and take dinner with us, just the same.”
Remis: “But in this state—”
Mrs. Roberts: “Oh, never mind the state. You look perfectly well; and if you insist upon going I shall know that you bear a grudge against Edward for not arresting him. Wait! We can put you in perfect order in just a second.” She flies out of the room, and then comes swooping back with a needle and thread, a fresh white necktie, a handkerchief, and a hair - brush. “There! I can’t let you go to Edward’s dressing-room, because he’s there himself, and the children are in mine, and we’ve had to put the new maid in the guest-chamber — you are rather cramped in flats, that’s true; that’s the worst of them — but if you don’t mind having your toilet made in public, like the King of France—”
Bemis, entering into the spirit of it: “Not the least; but—” He laughs, and drops back into his chair. —
Mrs. Roberts, distributing the brush to young Mr. Bemis, and the tie to his wife, and dropping upon her knees before Mr. Bemis: “Now, Mrs. Lou, you just whip off that crumpled tie and whip on the fresh one, and, Mister Lou, you give his hair a touch, and I’ll have this torn button-hole mended before you can think.” She seizes it and begins to sew vigorously upon it.
Mrs. Crashaw: “Agnes, you are the most ridiculously sensible woman in the country.” lawton, standing before the group, with his arms folded and his feet well apart, in an attitude of easy admiration: “The Wounded Adonis, attended by the Loves and Graces. Familiar Pompeian fresco.”
Mrs. Roberts, looking around at him: “I don’t see a great many Loves.”
Lawton: “She ignores us, Mrs. Crashaw. And after what you’ve just said!”
Mrs. Roberts: “Then why don’t you do something?”
Lawton: “The Loves never do anything — in frescoes. They stand round and sympathize. Besides, we are waiting to administer an anaesthetic. But what I admire in this subject even more than the activity of the Graces is the serene dignity of the Adonis. I have seen my old friend in many trying positions, but I never realized till now all the simpering absurdity, the flattered silliness, the senile coquettishness, of which his benign countenance was capable.”
Mrs. Roberts: “Don’t mind him a bit, Mr. Bemis; it’s nothing but—”
Lawton: “Pure envy. I own it.”
Bemis: “All right, Lawton. Wait till—”
Mrs. Roberts, making a final stitch, snapping off the thread, and springing to her feet, all in one: “There, have you finished, Mr and Mrs. Lou? Well, then, take this lace handkerchief, and draw it down from his neck and pin it in his waistcoat, and you have—”
Lawton, as Mr. Bemis rises to his feet: “A Gentleman of the Old School. Bemis, you look like a miniature of yourself by Malbone. Rather flattered, but — recognizable.”
Bemis, with perfectly recovered gayety: “Go on, go on, Lawton. I can understand your envy. I can pity it.”
Lawton: “Could you forgive Roberts for not capturing the garroter?”
Bemis: “Yes, I could. I could give the garroter his liberty, and present him with an admission to the Provident Wood-yard, where he could earn an honest living for his family.”
Lawton, compassionately: “You are pretty far gone, Bemis. Really, I think somebody ought to go for Roberts.”
Mrs. Roberts,
innocently: “Yes, indeed! Why, what in the world can be keeping him?” A nursemaid enters and beckons Mrs. Roberts to the door with a glance. She runs to her; they whisper; and then Mrs. Roberts, over her shoulder: “That ridiculous great boy of mine says he can’t go to sleep unless I come and kiss him goodnight.” —
Lawton: “Which ridiculous great boy, I wonder? — Roberts, or Campbell? But I didn’t know they had gone to bed!”
Mrs. Bemis: “You are too bad, papa! You know it’s little Neddy.”
Mrs. Roberts, vanishing: “Oh, I don’t mind his nonsense, Lou. I’ll fetch them both back with me.”
Lawton, after making a melodramatic search for concealed listeners at the doors: “Now, friends, I have a revelation to make in Mrs. Roberts’s absence. I have found out the garroter — the assassin.”
All the others: “What!”
Lawton: “He has been secured—”
Mrs. Crashaw, severely: “Well, I’m very glad of it.”
Young Remis: “By the police?”
Mrs. Bemis, incredulously: “Papa!”
Remis: “But there were several of them. Have they all been arrested?”
Lawton: “There was only one, and none of him has been arrested.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Where is he, then?”
Lawton: “In this house.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Now, Dr. Lawton, you and I are old friends — I shouldn’t like to say how old — but if you don’t instantly be serious, I — I’ll carry my rheumatism to somebody else.”
Lawton: “My dear Mrs. Crash aw, you know how much I prize that rheumatism of yours! I will be serious — I will be only too serious. The garroter is Mr. Roberts himself.”
All, horror-struck: “Oh!”
Lawton: “He went out without his watch. He thought he was robbed, but he wasn’t. He ran after the supposed thief, our poor friend Bemis here, and took Bemis’s watch away, and brought it home for his own.”
Young Bemis: “Yes, but—”
Mrs. Bemis: “But, papa—”
Bemis: “How do you know it? I can see how such a thing might happen, but — how do you know it did?”
Lawton: “I divined it.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Nonsense!”
Lawton: “Very well, then, I read of just such a case in the Advertiser a year ago. It occurs annually — in the newspapers. And I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Crashaw — Roberts found out his mistake as soon as he went to his dressing-room; and that ingenious nephew of yours, who’s closeted with him there, has been trying to put him up to something — to some game.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Willis has too much sense. He would know that Edward couldn’t carry out any sort of game.”
Lawton: “Well, then, he’s getting Roberts to let him carry out the game.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Edward couldn’t do that either.” Lawton: “Very well, then, just wait till they come back. Will you leave me to deal with Campbell?”
Mrs. Crashaw: “What are you going to do?” Young Bemis: “You mustn’t forget that he got us out of the elevator, sir.”
Mrs. Bemis: “We might have been there yet if it hadn’t been for him, papa.”
Mrs. Crashaw: “I shouldn’t want Willis mortified.”
Bemis: “Nor Mr. Roberts annoyed. We’re fellow-sufferers in this business.”
Lawton: “Oh, leave it to me, leave it to me! I’ll spare their feelings. Don’t be afraid. Ah, there they come! Now don’t say anything. I’ll just step into the anteroom here.”
II. MR. ROBERTS, MR. CAMPBELL, AND THE OTHERS.
Roberts, entering the room before Campbell, and shaking hands with his guests: “Ah, Mr. Bemis; Mrs. Bemis; Aunt Mary! You’ve heard of our comical little coincidence — our — Mr. Bemis and my—” He halts, confused, and looks around for the moral support of Willis, who follows hilariously.
Willis: “Greatest joke on record! But I won’t spoil it for you, Roberts. Go on!” In a low voice to Roberts: “And don’t look so confoundedly down in the mouth. They won’t think it’s a joke at all.”
Roberts, with galvanic lightness: “Yes, yes — such a joke! Well, you see — you see—”
Mrs. Crashaw: “See what, Edward? Do get it out!”
Willis, jollily: “Ah, ha, ha!”
Roberts, lugubriously: “Ah, ha, ha!”
Mrs. Bemis: “How funny! Ha, ha, ha!” Young Mr. Bemis: “Capital! capital!”
Bemis: “Excellent!”
Willis: “Go on, Roberts, do! or I shall die! Ah, ha, ha!”
Roberts, in a low voice of consternation to Willis: “Where was I? I can’t go on unless I know where I was.”
Willis, sotto voce to Roberts: “You weren’t anywhere! For Heaven’s sake, make a start!” Roberts, to the others, convulsively: “Ha, ha, ha! I supposed all the time, you know, that I had been robbed, and — and—” —
Willis: “Go on! go on!”
Roberts, whispering: “I can’t do it!”
Willis, whispering: “You’ve got to! You’re the beaver that clomb the tree. Laugh naturally, now!”
Roberts, with a staccato groan, which he tries to make pass for a laugh: “And then I ran after the man—” He stops, and regards Mr. Bemis with a ghastly stare.
Mrs. Crashaw: “What is the matter with you, Edward? Are you sick?”
Willis: “Sick? No! Can’t you see that he can’t get over the joke of the thing? It’s killing him.” To Roberts: “Brace up, old man! You’re doing it splendidly.”
Roberts, hopelessly: “And then the other man — the man that had robbed me — the man that I had pursued — ugh!”
Willis: “Well, it is too much for him. I shall have to tell it myself, I see.”
Roberts, making a wild effort to command himself: “And so — so — this man — man — ma—”
Willis: “Oh, good Lord—” Dr. Lawton suddenly appears from the anteroom and confronts him. “Oh, the devil!”
Lawton, folding his arms, and fixing his eyes upon him: “Which means that you forgot I was coming.”
Willis: “Doctor, you read a man’s symptoms at a glance.”
Lawton: “Yes; and I can see that you are in a bad way, Mr. Campbell.”
Willis: “Why don’t you advertise, Doctor? Patients need only enclose a lock of their hair, and the color of their eyes, with one dollar to pay the cost of materials, which will be sent, with full directions for treatment, by return mail. Seventh son of a seventh son.”
Lawton: “Ah, don’t try to jest it away, my poor friend. This is one of those obscure diseases of the heart — induration of the pericardium — which, if not taken in time, result in deceitfulness above all things, and desperate wickedness.”
Willis: “Look here, Dr. Lawton, what are you up to?”
Lawton: “Look here, Mr. Campbell, what is your little game?”
Willis: “I don’t know what you’re up to.” He shrugs his shoulders and walks up the room.
Lawton, shrugging his shoulders and walking up the room abreast of Campbell: “I don’t know what your little game is.” They return together, and stop, confronting each other.
Willis: “But if you think I’m going to give myself away—”
Lawton: “If you suppose I’m going to take you at your own figure—” They walk up the room together, and return as before.
Willis: “Mrs. Bemis, what is this unnatural parent of yours after?”
Mrs. Bemis, tittering: “Oh, I’m sure I can’t tell.”
Willis: “Aunt Mary, you used to be a friend of mine. Can’t you give me some sort of clew?” Mrs. Crashaw: “I should be ashamed of you, Willis, if you accepted anybody’s help.”
Willis, sighing: “Well, this is pretty hard on an orphan. Here I come to join a company of friends at the fireside of a burgled brother-in-law, and I find myself in a nest of conspirators.” Suddenly, after a moment: “Oh, I understand. Why, I ought to have seen at once. But no matter — it’s just as well. I’m sure that we shall hear Dr. Lawton leniently, and make allowance f
or his well-known foible. Roberts is bound by the laws of hospitality, and Mr. Bemis is the father-in-law of his daughter.” Mrs. Bemis, in serious dismay: “Why, Mr. Campbell, what do you mean?”
Willis: “Simply that the mystery is solved — the double garroter is discovered. I’m sorry for you, Mrs. Bemis; and no one will wish to deal harshly with your father when he confesses that it was he who robbed Mr. Roberts and Mr. Bemis. All that they ask is to have their watches back. Go on, Doctor! How will that do, Aunt Mary, for a little flyer?”
Mrs. Crashaw: “Willis, I declare I never saw anybody like you!” She embraces him with joyous pride.
Roberts, coming forward, anxiously: “But, my dear Willis—”
Willis, clapping his hand over his mouth, and leading him back to his place: “We can’t let you talk now. I’ve no doubt you’ll be considerate, and all that, but Dr. Lawton has the floor. Go on, Doctor! Free your mind! Don’t be afraid of telling the whole truth! It will be better for you in the end.” He rubs his hands gleefully, and then thrusting the points of them into his waistcoat-pockets, stands beaming triumphantly upon Lawton.
Lawton: “Do you think so?” With well-affected trepidation: “Well, friends, if I must confess this — this—”
Willis: “High-handed outrage. Go on.”
Lawton: “I suppose I must. I shall not expect mercy for myself; perhaps you’ll say that, as an old and hardened offender, I don’t deserve it. But I had an accomplice — a young man very respectably connected, and who, whatever his previous life may have been, had managed to keep a good reputation; a young man a little apt to be misled by overweening vanity and the ill-advised flattery of his friends; but I hope that neither of you gentlemen will be hard upon him, but will consider his youth, and perhaps his congenital moral and intellectual deficiencies, even when you find your watches — on Mr. Campbell’s person.” He leans forward, rubbing his hands, and smiling upon Campbell. “How will that do, Mr. Campbell, for a flyer?”
Willis, turning to Mrs. Crashaw: “One ahead, Aunt Mary?”
Lawton, clasping him by the hand: “Ho, generous youth — even!” They shake hands, clapping each other on the back with their lefts, and joining in the general laugh.
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