The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton. Curtis Wardon Allan

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СКАЧАТЬ silently into the water under the vessel’s counter, went the unfortunate man.

      Plump, into the yawl with the rescue crew, went Mrs. Endicott. Far astern through the dusk could be seen a black silk hat on the still water. Astern could be heard the voice of Mr. Breckenridge Endicott crying, “Quick, quick! I can swim a little, but I am almost gone!”

      “Turn to the left, to the left,” cried Mrs. Endicott.

      “But the cries come from the right,” said the coxswain.

      “That’s his hat to the left. I know his hat. I saw him fall. I know his voice. It’s his hat and his voice.”

      The crew could have sworn that the cries came from the right, but to the hat they steered and the cries ceased before their arrival. They lifted the hat. Nothing beneath but eighty fathoms of water.

      It was some time thereafter that a fisherman came upon a corpse floating inshore. Its face was bloated to such an extent as to prevent recognition. Its clothes were those of a steamboat roustabout. In the breastpocket was a large pocketbook bearing in gilt letters the legend, “Mr. Breckenridge Endicott.”

      “The present I gave him on the morning of our departure!” exclaimed Miss Almira, “now so strangely found on the dead body of the man who robbed him and probably murdered him.”

      Although soaked, the bills were redeemable. The fisherman was a fisherman who owned a town house on Prairie Avenue and a country house at Oconomowoc and he would take no reward. The bills amounted to nine thousand dollars. Taking her fortune, Almira retired to her former home in Ogle county, Illinois, where once more meeting Mr. Jake Long, lately made a widower, after a decent period of waiting, they became man and wife. So it ended happily for all except the person who called himself Mr. Breckenridge Endicott – though I suspect that was not his name – and for Mr. Algernon Tibbs. Lest you waste pity on Mr. Algernon Tibbs, let me say that in his youth, he was accustomed to kill little girl’s cats, and that his fortune was entirely one he beat out of his brother-in-law, James Wilkinson.

      What Befell Mr. Middleton Because of the Second Gift of the Emir

      “The individual whose sad taking-off I have just narrated,” said the emir of the tribe of Al-Yam, “affords an excellent example of the power of good clothes. Suppose he had secreted himself under Miss Almira’s bed wearing a jumper, overalls, and a mask. He would have been arrested and lodged in the penitentiary.”

      “But he is now dead,” said Mr. Middleton.

      “He had better be dead, than continuing his career of villainy and crime,” quoth the emir sternly, and then passing his eyes over the person of Mr. Middleton, he remarked the somewhat threadbare and glossy garments of that excellent young man. “If you would accept a suit of raiment from me,” continued the emir with a hesitation that betrayed the delicacy which was one of the most marked of the many estimable traits that made his character so admirable, “I would be overjoyed and obliged. The interests of you, my only friend in this vast land, have become to me as my own. Unfortunately I have no Frank clothes except the one suit I wear daily. But of the costumes of my native land, I have abundant store, and as we are of the same stature, I beg you will make me happy by accepting one.”

      Speaking some words to Mesrour in the language of Arabia, the blackamore brought in and proceeded to invest Mr. Middleton with an elegant silken habit consisting of a pair of exceedingly baggy trousers of the hue of emeralds, a round jacket whose crimson rivalled the rubies of Farther Ind, and a vest of snowy white. Double rows of small pearls ornamented the edges of the jacket, which was short and just met a copper-colored sash about the waist. After inducting him into a pair of white leggings and bronze shoes, Mesrour clapped upon his head a large white turban ornamented with a black aigret.

      Mr. Middleton looked very well in his new garments and while the emir was complimenting him upon this fact and the grace of his bearing and Mr. Middleton was uttering protestations of gratitude, Mesrour busied himself, and Mr. Middleton, turning with intent to resume his wonted garb, was astonished to find it in a network of heavy twine tied with a multiplicity of knots.

      “Mesrour will bring you your Frank clothes in the morning. I am very tired, and so I will bid you good night,” and the yawn which now overspread the face of the accomplished prince told more than his words that the audience was ended.

      Mr. Middleton looked at the bundle with its array of knots. To untie it would require a long time and the prince was repeating his yawn and his good night. Even had he not hesitated to offend the prince by demanding opportunity to resume his customary vestments and to weary him by making him wait for this operation, which promised to be a long one, he would have been without volition in the matter; for in obedience to a gesture, Mesrour grasped his arm and with great deference, but inflexible and unalterable firmness, led him through the shop and closed the street door behind him.

      Mr. Middleton was greatly disconcerted at finding himself in the street arrayed in these brilliant and barbarous habiliments, but reflecting that the citizens traveling the streets at this hour would perhaps take him for some high official in one of the many fraternal orders that entertain, instruct, and edify the inhabitants of the city, he proceeded on his way somewhat reassured. As he was changing cars well toward his lodgings, at a corner where a large public hall reared its façade, he heard himself accosted, and turning, beheld a portly person wearing a gilt paper crown, a long robe of purple velvet bordered with rabbit’s fur spotted with black, and bearing in his hand a bung-starter, which, covered with gilt paper, made a very creditable counterfeit of a royal scepter.

      “Come here once,” said this personage.

      With great affableness expressing a willingness to come twice, if it were desired, Mr. Middleton accompanied the personage, as with an air of brooding mystery, the latter led him down the street twenty feet from where they had first stood.

      “Was you going to the masquerade?”

      “Yes,” said Mr. Middleton, divining from the presence of the personage and two other masquers whom he now beheld entering the hall, that a masquerade was in progress.

      “What’ll you take to stay away?”

      “Why?”

      “You’ll take the prize.”

      “What is the prize and why should the possibility of winning it deter me?”

      “The prize is five dollars. It’s this way. I am a saloonkeeper. Gustaf Kleiner and I are in love with the same girl. She is in love with all both of us. She don’t know what to say. She can’t marry all both, so she says she’ll marry the one what gits the prize at the masquerade. If you git the prize, don’t either of us git the girl already. I’ll give you twenty dollars to stay away.”

      “But what of Gustaf Kleiner? Have you paid him?”

      “He is going to be a devil. I hired two Irishmans for five dollars to meet him up the street, cut off his tail, break his horns, and put whitewash on his red suit. He is all right. I’ll make it thirty dollars and a ticket of the raffle for my watch to-morrow.”

      “Done,” said Mr. Middleton, and he proceeded to draw up a contract binding him to stay away from the masquerade for a consideration of thirty dollars.

      It was not the least remarkable part of his adventure that he did not meet Gustaf Kleiner in his damaged suit and for a consideration of fifty dollars, lend him the magnificent Oriental costume. He did not see Gustaf Kleiner at all, nor did he win the watch in the raffle and the chronicler hopes that the setting down of these facts will not cause the readers to doubt his veracity, СКАЧАТЬ