He began to move on again and this time towards the bridge spanning the cut. I followed him very closely. In the center of it he paused and looked down at the track beneath him. Another train was approaching. As it came near he trembled from head to foot, and catching at the railing against which he leaned, was about to make a quick move forward when a puff of smoke arose from below and sent him staggering backward, gasping with a terror I could hardly understand till I saw that the smoke had taken the form of a spiral and was sailing away before him in what to his disordered imagination must have looked like a gigantic image of the coil with which twice before on this day he had found himself confronted.
It may have been chance and it may have been providence; but whichever it was it saved him. He could not face that semblance of his haunting thought; and turning away he cowered down on the neighboring curbstone, where he sat for several minutes, with his head buried in his hands; when he rose again he was his own daring and sinister self. Knowing that he was now too much master of his faculties to ignore me any longer, I walked quickly away and left him. I knew where he would be at six o’clock and had already engaged a table at the same restaurant. It was seven, however, before he put in an appearance, and by this time he was looking more composed. There was a reckless air about him, however, which was perhaps only noticeable to me; for none of the habitues of this especial restaurant were entirely without it; wild eyes and unkempt hair being in the majority.
I let him eat. The dinner he ordered was simple and I had not the heart to interrupt his enjoyment of it.
But when he had finished; and came to pay, then I allowed the shock to come. Under the bill which the waiter laid at the side of his plate was the inevitable steel coil; and it produced even more than its usual effect. I own I felt sorry for him.
He did not dash from the place, however, as he had from the liquor-saloon. A spirit of resistance had seized him and he demanded to know where this object of his fear had come from. No one could tell him (or would). Whereupon he began to rave and would certainly have done himself or somebody else an injury if he had not been calmed by a man almost as wild-looking as himself. Paying his bill, but vowing he would never enter the place again, he went out, clay-white, but with the swaggering air of a man who had just asserted himself.
He drooped, however, as soon as he reached the street, and I had no difficulty in following him to a certain gambling den where he gained three dollars and lost five. From there he went to his lodgings in West Tenth Street.
I did not follow him in. He had passed through many deep and wearing emotions since noon, and I had not the heart to add another to them.
But late the next day I returned to this house and rang the bell. It was already dusk, but there was light enough for me to notice the unrepaired condition of the iron railings on either side of the old stone stoop and to compare this abode of decayed grandeur with the spacious and elegant apartment in which pretty Mrs. Holmes mourned the loss of her young husband. Had any such comparison ever been made by the unhappy John Graham, as he hurried up these decayed steps into the dismal halls beyond?
In answer to my summons there came to the door a young woman to whom I had but to intimate my wish to see Mr. Graham for her to let me in with the short announcement:
“Top floor, back room! Door open, he’s out; door shut, he’s in.”
As an open door meant liberty to enter, I lost no time in following the direction of her pointing finger, and presently found myself in a low attic chamber overlooking an acre of roofs. A fire had been lighted in the open grate, and the flickering red beams danced on ceiling and walls with a cheeriness greatly in contrast to the nature of the business which had led me there. As they also served to light the room I proceeded to make myself at home; and drawing up a chair, sat down at the fireplace in such a way as to conceal myself from any one entering the door.
In less than half an hour he came in.
He was in a state of high emotion. His face was flushed and his eyes burning. Stepping rapidly forward, he flung his hat on the table in the middle of the room, with a curse that was half cry and half groan. Then he stood silent and I had an opportunity of noting how haggard he had grown in the short time which had elapsed since I had seen him last. But the interval of his inaction was short, and in a moment he flung up his arms with a loud “Curse her!” that rang through the narrow room and betrayed the source of his present frenzy. Then he again stood still, grating his teeth and working his hands in a way terribly suggestive of the murderer’s instinct. But not for long. He saw something that attracted his attention on the table, a something upon which my eyes had long before been fixed, and starting forward with a fresh and quite different display of emotion, he caught up what looked like a roll of manuscript and began to tear it open.
“Back again! Always back!” wailed from his lips; and he gave the roll a toss that sent from its midst a small object which he no sooner saw than he became speechless and reeled back. It was another of the steel coils.
“Good God!” fell at last from his stiff and working lips. “Am I mad or has the devil joined in the pursuit against me? I cannot eat, I cannot drink, but this diabolical spring starts up before me. It is here, there, everywhere. The visible sign of my guilt; the—the——” He had stumbled back upon my chair, and turning, saw me.
I was on my feet at once, and noting that he was dazed by the shock of my presence, I slid quietly between him and the door.
The movement roused him. Turning upon me with a sarcastic smile in which was concentrated the bitterness of years, he briefly said:
“So, I am caught! Well, there has to be an end to men as well as to things, and I am ready for mine. She turned me away from her door to-day, and after the hell of that moment I don’t much fear any other.”
“You had better not talk,” I admonished him. “All that falls from you now will only tell against you on your trial.”
He broke into a harsh laugh. “And do you think I care for that? That having been driven by a woman’s perfidy into crime I am going to bridle my tongue and keep down the words which are my only safeguard from insanity? No, no; while my miserable breath lasts I will curse her, and if the halter is to cut short my words, it shall be with her name blistering my lips.”
I attempted to speak, but he would not give me the opportunity. The passion of weeks had found vent and he rushed on recklessly.
“I went to her house to-day. I wanted to see her in her widow’s weeds; I wanted to see her eyes red with weeping over a grief which owed its bitterness to me. But she would not grant me an admittance. She had me thrust from her door, and I shall never know how deeply the iron has sunk into her soul. But—” and here his face showed a sudden change, “I shall see her if I am tried for murder. She will be in the court-room—on the witness stand——”
“Doubtless,” I interjected; but his interruption came quickly and with vehement passion.
“Then I am ready. Welcome trial, conviction, death, even. To confront her eye to eye is all I wish. She shall never forget it, never!”
“Then you do not deny——” I began.
“I deny nothing,” he returned, and held out his hands with a grim gesture. “How can I, when there falls from everything I touch, the devilish thing which took away the life I hated?”
“Have you anything more to say or do before you leave these rooms?” I asked.
He shook his head, and then, bethinking himself, pointed to the roll of paper which he had flung on the table.
“Burn that!” he cried.
I took up the roll and looked at it. It was the manuscript of a poem in blank verse.
“I have been with it into a dozen newspaper and magazine offices,” he explained with great bitterness. “Had I succeeded in getting a publisher for it I might have forgotten my wrongs and tried to build up a new life on the ruins o
f the old. But they would not have it, none of them, so I say, burn it! that no memory of me may remain in this miserable world.”
“Keep to the facts!” I severely retorted. “It was while carrying this poem from one newspaper to another that you secured that bit of print upon the blank side of which you yourself printed the obituary notice with which you savored your revenge upon the woman who had disappointed you.”
“You know that? Then you know where I got the poison with which I tipped the silly toy with which that weak man fooled away his life?”
“No,” said I, “I do not know where you got it. I merely know it was no common poison bought at a druggist’s, or from any ordinary chemist.”
“It was woorali; the deadly, secret woorali. I got it from—but that is another man’s secret. You will never hear from me anything that will compromise a friend. I got it, that is all. One drop, but it killed my man.”
The satisfaction, the delight, which he threw into these words are beyond description. As they left his lips a jet of flame from the neglected fire shot up and threw his figure for one instant into bold relief upon the lowering ceiling; then it died out, and nothing but the twilight dusk remained in the room and on the countenance of this doomed and despairing man.
The Suicide of Kiaros
L. FRANK BAUM
Lyman Frank Baum (1856–1919) is justly remembered today for having created the most magical and popular series of fairy tales ever written by an American, beginning with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900.
Although he had several different jobs as a young man, his great success came as a writer, first with articles for newspapers and magazines, then with short stories. In 1897, he penned a successful children’s book, Mother Goose in Prose; two years later it was followed by Father Goose: His Book, which became a bestseller.
Writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the following year, the publication of which he financed himself, was the first step on a yellow brick road to one of the most prolific careers in American literature. Baum became perhaps the first wildly popular non-European children’s book author. He wrote nineteen additional Oz books—two were published posthumously and one, The Royal Book of Oz (1921), carried his byline but was written entirely by Ruth Plumly Thompson, who wrote more Oz novels than Baum himself—nineteen.
A great many of Baum’s images and phrases from the Oz books are so familiar that they have become common knowledge, as well as a part of the English language. It is a rare person who does not understand references to the yellow brick road, ruby red slippers, Munchkins, or the mantra “There’s no place like home”—a comforting phrase that evokes life returning to normalcy.
Many of the Oz novels were filmed, though none as successfully as the 1939 The Wizard of Oz, with its iconic portrayals: Dorothy by Judy Garland (though the studio’s first choice was Shirley Temple), the Cowardly Lion by Bert Lahr, the Scarecrow by Ray Bolger, and the Tin Man by Jack Haley.
The cozily optimistic tone of the books and films therefore make the following story especially shocking, as its darkness in outlook and resolution is as utterly opposite of Oz as one can be.
“The Suicide of Kiaros” was originally published in the September 1897 issue of the now-forgotten literary magazine The White Elephant.
THE SUICIDE OF KIAROS
L. Frank Baum
I
Mr. Felix Marston, cashier for the great mercantile firm of Van Alsteyne & Traynor, sat in his little private office with a balance sheet before him and a frown upon his handsome face. At times he nervously ran his slim fingers through the mass of dark hair that clustered over his forehead, and the growing expression of annoyance upon his features fully revealed his disquietude.
The world knew and admired Mr. Marston, and a casual onlooker would certainly have decided that something had gone wrong with the firm’s financial transactions; but Mr. Marston knew himself better than the world did, and grimly realized that although something had gone very wrong indeed, it affected himself in an unpleasantly personal way.
The world’s knowledge of the popular young cashier included the following items: He had entered the firm’s employ years before in an inferior position, and by energy, intelligence, and business ability, had worked his way up until he reached the post he now occupied, and became his employers’ most trusted servant. His manner was grave, earnest, and dignified; his judgment, in business matters, clear and discerning. He had no intimate friends, but was courteous and affable to all he met, and his private life, so far as it was known, was beyond all reproach.
Mr. Van Alsteyne, the head of the firm, conceived a warm liking for Mr. Marston, and finally invited him to dine at his house. It was there the young man first met Gertrude Van Alsteyne, his employer’s only child, a beautiful girl and an acknowledged leader in society. Attracted by the man’s handsome face and gentlemanly bearing, the heiress encouraged him to repeat his visit, and Marston followed up his advantage so skillfully that within a year she had consented to become his wife. Mr. Van Alsteyne did not object to the match. His admiration for the young man deepened, and he vowed that upon the wedding day he would transfer one-half his interest in the firm to his son-in-law.
Therefore the world, knowing all this, looked upon Mr. Marston as one of fortune’s favorites, and predicted a great future for him. But Mr. Marston, as I said, knew himself more intimately than did the world, and now, as he sat looking upon that fatal trial balance, he muttered in an undertone:
“Oh, you fool—you fool!”
Clear-headed, intelligent man of the world though he was, one vice had mastered him. A few of the most secret, but most dangerous gambling dens knew his face well. His ambition was unbounded, and before he had even dreamed of being able to win Miss Van Alsteyne as his bride, he had figured out several ingenious methods of winning a fortune at the green table. Two years ago he had found it necessary to “borrow” a sum of money from the firm to enable him to carry out these clever methods. Having, through some unforeseen calamity, lost the money, another sum had to be abstracted to allow him to win back enough to even the accounts. Other men have attempted this before; their experiences are usually the same. By a neat juggling of figures, the books of the firm had so far been made to conceal his thefts, but now it seemed as if fortune, in pushing him forward, was about to hurl him down a precipice.
His marriage to Gertrude Van Alsteyne was to take place in two weeks, and as Mr. Van Alsteyne insisted upon keeping his promise to give Marston an interest in the business, the change in the firm would necessitate a thorough overhauling of the accounts, which meant discovery and ruin to the man who was about to grasp a fortune and a high social position—all that his highest ambition had ever dreamed of attaining.
It is no wonder that Mr. Marston, brought face to face with his critical position, denounced himself for his past folly, and realized his helplessness to avoid the catastrophe that was about to crush him.
A voice outside interrupted his musings and arrested his attention.
“It is Mr. Marston I wish to see.”
The cashier thrust the sheet of figures within a drawer of the desk, hastily composed his features, and opened the glass door beside him.
“Show Mr. Kiaros this way,” he called, after a glance at his visitor. He had frequently met the person who now entered his office, but he could not resist a curious glance as the man sat down upon a chair and spread his hands over his knees. He was short and thick-set in form, and both oddly and carelessly dressed, but his head and face were most venerable in appearance. Flowing locks of pure white graced a forehead whose height and symmetry denoted unusual intelligence, and a full beard of the same purity reached full to his waist. The eyes were full and dark, but not piercing in character, rather conveying in their frank glance kindness and benevolence. A round cap of some dark material was worn upon his head, and this he deferentially removed as he seated hi
mself, and said:
“For me a package of value was consigned to you, I believe?” Marston nodded gravely. “Mr. Williamson left it with me,” he replied.
“I will take it,” announced the Greek, calmly; “twelve thousand dollars it contains.”
Marston started. “I knew it was money,” he said, “but was not aware of the amount. This is it, I think.”
He took from the huge safe a packet, corded and sealed, and handed it to his visitor. Kiaros took a pen-knife from his pocket, cut the cords, and removed the wrapper, after which he proceeded to count the contents.
Marston listlessly watched him. Twelve thousand dollars. That would be more than enough to save him from ruin, if only it belonged to him instead of this Greek money-lender.
“The amount, it is right,” declared the old man, rewrapping the parcel of notes. “You have my thanks, sir. Good afternoon,” and he rose to go.
“Pardon me, sir,” said Marston, with a sudden thought; “it is after banking hours. Will it be safe to carry this money with you until morning?”
The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries Page 116
