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, for he is aware that usually these things are ordered differently.
Having kept the Oriental costume for several days and seeing no prospect of ever wearing it, and his small closet having become crowded by the presence of a new twenty-dollar suit which he purchased with part of his gains, he presented it to the young lady in Englewood previously mentioned, who reduced the ruby red jacket to a beautiful bolero jacket, made a table throw of the sash, and after much hesitation seized the exceedingly baggy trousers--which were made with but one seam--and ripping them up, did, with a certain degree of confusion, fashion them into two lovely shirt waists. But she did not wear them in the presence of Mr. Middleton and did not even mention them to him. Nor did Mr. Middleton allude to any of these transactions when on the appointed day and hour he again sat in the presence of the urbane prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Handing him a bowl of delicately flavored sherbet, Achmed began to narrate The Adventure of William Hicks.
_The Adventure of William Hicks._
Young William Hicks was a native of the village of Bensonville, in the southern part of Illinois. Having, at the age of twenty, graduated at the head of a cla.s.s of six in the village school, his father thought to reward him for his diligence in study by a short trip to the city of Chicago, which metropolis William had never beheld. Addressing him in a discourse which, while not long, abounded in valuable advice, Mr.
Hicks presented his son with a sum of money sufficient for a stay of a week, provided it were not expended imprudently.
One evening, William was walking along Wabash Avenue, feeling somewhat lonely as he soberly reflected that not one in all that vast mult.i.tude cared anything about him, when he heard himself accosted in a most cheery manner, and looking up, beheld a beautiful lady smiling at him.
It was plain that she belonged to the upper cla.s.ses. A hat of very large proportions, ornamented with a great ostrich plume, shaded a head of lovely yellow hair. She was clothed all in rustling purple silk and sparkled with jewelry. Her cheeks and lips glowed with a carmine quite unknown among the fair but pale damosels of Bensonville, which is situated in a low alluvial location, surrounded by flat plains, the whole being somewhat damp and malarial. William had never imagined eyes so wide open and glistening.
"My name is w.i.l.l.y, to be sure. But you have the advantage of me, for ashamed as I am to say it, I cannot quite recall you. You are not the lady who came to Bensonville and stayed at the Campbellite minister"s?"
"Oh, how are all the dear folks in Bensonville? But, say, Will, don"t you want to come along with me awhile and talk it all over?"
"I should be honored to do so, if you will lead the way. I confess I am lonely to-night, and I always enjoy talking over old times."
At this juncture, a sudden look of alarm spread over the lady"s beauteous face and a lumbering minion of the law stepped before her.
"Up to your old tricks, eh?" he growled. "Didn"t I tell you that the next time I caught you tackling a man, I"d run you in? Run you in it is. Come on, now."
"Oh, oh," panted the lady, and great tears welled into her adorable eyes. At that moment, there was a crash in the street, as a poor Italian exile had his push cart overturned by the sudden and unexpected backing of a cab. The policeman turned to look and, like a frightened gazelle, the lady bounded away, closely followed by young William.
"Is there nothing I can do? Cannot I complain to the judge for you, or address a communication to some paper describing and condemning this conduct?"
"Is he coming? Is he coming?" asked the lady, piteously.
"No. But if he were, I would strike him, big as he is. Cannot a former visitor in Bensonville greet one of its citizens without interference from the police?"
Hereupon the lady, who seemed to be giving little heed to what William was saying, beyond the information that the policeman was not in pursuit, gave a gay little laugh of relief, which caused William"s eyes to light in pitying sympathy.
"Now that we are away from him, what do you say to a friendly game of cards somewhere, to pa.s.s away the evening, which hangs heavy on my hands and doubtless does on yours?"
"I have never played cards," said William, "for while there is nothing intrinsically wrong in them, they are the vehicle of much that is injurious, and at the very least, they cause one to fritter away valuable time in profitless amus.e.m.e.nt."
"Oh, la! you are wrong there," said the lady, with a little silvery laugh. "They are not a profitless amus.e.m.e.nt. Why, a man has to keep his brains in good trim when he plays cards, and whist is just as good a mental exercise as geometry and algebra, or any other study where the mind is engaged upon various problems. You see I stand up for cards, for I teach whist myself and I a.s.sure you that many of the leading ladies of this city spend their time in little else than whist, which they would not do if cards were what you say. Before you pa.s.s your opinion, why not let me show you some of the fine points, and then you will have something to base your judgment upon."
William, quite impressed by the elegance and social standing of the lady, as well as influenced by her beauty, despite her evident seniority of ten or fifteen years, a.s.sented, and the lady continued:
"I would invite you to my own apartments, but they are so far away, and as we are now in front of the Hotel Dieppe, let us go up and engage a room for a few hours and I will teach you a few little interesting tricks with which you can amuse the people of Bensonville, and even obtain some profit, if you wish to. What do you say?"
William averring that he would be pleased to receive the proffered instruction, she led the way up a flight of stairs and paused in the doorway of the hotel office, for the Hotel Dieppe was a hostelry of no great pretentions and occupied the upper stories of a building, the lower floors of which were devoted to a furniture emporium. Behind the counter stood a low-browed clerk with a large diamond in his shirt front, who scrutinized them keenly.
"You get the room," said the lady, coyly. "I"m bashful and don"t like to go in there where are all those smoking men. You may take it in my name if you wish,--Madeleine Montmorency."
"Number 15," said the clerk, and in a s.p.a.ce William found himself in a dark room, alone with the lady, and heard the door close behind them and the key turn in the lock.
"We are locked in!" exclaimed Miss Montmorency.
"What"s that?" said a deep voice in the darkness.
Miss Montmorency screamed, and screamed again as William turned on the light and they beheld a man lying in bed!
William was stepping hastily to her side to shield her vision from this improper spectacle, when he paused as if frozen to the floor. The man was now sitting up in bed and he had a _red flannel night gown, one eye_, AND TWO NOSES!
"What the devil are you doing here?" exclaimed the monster in the red flannel nightgown.
"That I will gladly tell you, for I would not have you believe that we wantonly intruded upon your slumbers." And thereupon William related that he was a citizen of Bensonville who had met a former visitor there and they had come here to talk over mutual acquaintances and improve their minds by discreet discourse. "But, sir," he said, in concluding, "pardon my natural curiosity concerning yourself. Who are you and why are you?"
"If I had the printed copies of my life here, I would gladly sell you one, but I left them all behind. My name is Walker Sheldrup. I am registered from Springfield, Ma.s.s., but I am from Dubuque, Iowa. I was born in Sedalia, Mo., where my father was a prominent citizen. It was he who led the company of men who, with five ox teams, hauled the courthouse away from Georgetown and laid the foundations of Sedalia"s greatness. Had he lived, Sedalia would not have tried in vain to swipe the capital from Jefferson City. As a youth I was distinguished--but I"ll cut all that out. Your presence here and the door being locked behind you only too surely warns me that we have no time to lose. They have taken you for the snake-eating lady and the rubber-skinned boy, who ran away when I did and who were to meet me here in Chicago. If you will turn your heads away so I can dress, I will continue. You have heard of prenatal influences. Shortly before I was born, my mother made nine pumpkin pies and set them to cool on a stone wall beneath the shade of a large elm. As luck would have it, a menagerie pa.s.sed by and an elephant grabbed those pies one after another and ate them. The sight of that enormous pachyderm gobbling my mother"s cherished handiwork, completely upset her. I was born with two noses like the two tusks of the beast. At the same time, like the trunk, they are movable. My two noses are as mobile and useful as two fingers and if you have a quarter with you, I will gladly perform some curious feats. My noses being so near together, ordinarily, I join them with flesh-colored wax. I then seem to have but one nose, although a very large one. I thus escape the annoying attention of the mult.i.tude, which is very disagreeable to a proud man of good family, like me.
Young man, do you ever drink? In Dubuque, they got me drunk so I didn"t know what I was about and I signed a contract with a dime museum company for twenty-five dollars a week. Take warning from my fate. Never drink, never drink."
"I can well imagine your sufferings at being a spectacle for a ribald crowd," said William. "To a man of refined sensibilities, it must be excruciating, and it was an outrage to entrap you into such a contract."
"I ought to have had seventy-five and could have got fifty. So I ran away. Well, now, how are we going to get out of here? Can you climb over the transom, young man?"
As he said these words, the door flew open and in rushed some villainous looking men, who gagged, handcuffed, and shackled Miss Montmorency, William, and the two-nosed man.
"We have the legal right to do this," said the leader, displaying the badge of the Jinkins private detective agency. "Advices from Dubuque set us at work. We early located Sheldrup at this hotel, and when the clerk saw the rubber-skinned boy and the snake-eating lady come in, he suspicioned who they was at once and by a great stroke, put "em in with old two-nose. Do you think we are going to put you through for breach of contract and for swiping that money out of the till on the claim it was due you on salary? Nit. Cost too much, take too much time, and you git sent to jail instead of being back in the museum helping draw crowds. We are in for saving time and trouble for you, us, and your employer. To-night you ride out of here for Dubuque, covered up with hay, in the corner of the car carrying the new trick horse for the museum. Save your fare and all complications. Now, boys, we want to work this on the quiet, so we will just leave "em all here until the streets are deserted and there won"t be anybody around to notice us gitting "em into the hack."
"Hadn"t one of us better stay?" asked a subordinate.