Chapter IV: Part 4

Hardly had he uttered them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor. Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement of the wisdom of what the emir had said, Mr. Middleton began to make preparations to go. But Prince Achmed bade him wait, and saying a few words to Mesrour in the Arabic language, the blackamore brought to him a pair of pistols of a formidable aspect. In sooth, one could hardly tell whether they ought to be called pistols, or culverins. In the shape of the stocks alone could anyone detect that they were pistols. The bore of each was more than an inch in diameter, and the octagonal barrels of thick steel, heavily inlaid with silver, were a foot and a half long. The handles, which were in proportion to the barrels and so long that four hands could grasp them, were so completely covered with an inlay of pearl that no wood was visible. Taking one of them, the emir rammed home a great load of powder, upon which he placed a handful of balls as large as marbles. Having served the second likewise, he handed the pair to Mr. Middleton.

"Take them. Protected by them, you need have little fear. But woe betide the man who stands in front of them, for so wide is the distribution of their charge, that he must be a most indifferent marksman who could not do execution with them."

Thanking the emir for the gift and the entertainment and instruction of his discourse, Mr. Middleton departed. Impressed though he had been by Prince Achmed's counsel and by the lesson to be derived from the recital of the experiences of Dr. McDill, Mr. Middleton did not carry the pistols as he went about his daily vocation. It was impossible to so bestow them about his garments that they did not cause large and unsightly protuberances and to carry them openly was not to be thought of. Their weight, too, was so great that it was burdensome to carry them in any manner. Coming into his room unexpectedly in the middle of the forenoon of the Thursday following the acquisition of the weapons, he surprised Hilda Svenson, maid of all work, in the act of examining one of them, which she had extracted from the place where they lay concealed in the lower bureau drawer beneath a pile of underclothing. With a start of guilty surprise, Hilda let the pistol fall to the floor. Fortunately it did not go off, but nonetheless was he convinced that he ought to dispose of the two weapons, for any day Hilda might shoot herself with one, while on the weekly sheet changing day, Mrs. Leschinger, the landlady, might shoot herself with the other. There was no place in the room where he could conceal them from the painstaking investigations of Hilda and Mrs. Leschinger, and the expedient of extracting the charges not occurring to him, he felt that it was clearly his duty to remove the lives of the two women from jeopardy by disposing of the pistols. He was in truth pained at the necessity of parting with the gifts which the emir had made with such solicitude for his welfare and as some assuagement to this regret he sought to dispose of them as profitably as possible. With this end in view, he made an appointment for a private audience after hours with Mr. Sidney Kuppenheimer, who conducted a large loan bank on Madison Street and was reputed a connoisseur and admirer of all kinds of curios.

On the evening for which he had made the appointment, he set forth, intending to make an early and short call upon his friend Chauncy Stackelberg and wife, before repairing to Mr. Kuppenheimer's place of business. But such was the engaging quality of the conversation of the newly married couple, abounding both in humor and good sense, and so interested was he in hearing of the haps and mishaps of married life, a state he hoped to enter as soon as fortune and the young lady of Englewood should be propitious, that he was unaware of the flight of time until in the midst of a pause in the conversation, he heard the cathedral clock Mrs. Stackelberg's uncle had given her as a wedding present, solemnly tolling the hour of eleven. The hour Mr. Kuppenheimer had named was one hour agone. To have kept the appointment, he should have started two hours before.

Another half hour had flown before Mr. Middleton, having paused to partake of some chow-chow recently made by Mrs. Stackelberg and highly recommended by her liege, finally left the house, carrying a pistol in either hand. The night was somewhat cloudy, but although there was neither moon nor stars, it was much lighter than on some nights when all the minor luminaries are ablaze, or the moon itself is aloft, shining in its first or last quarter, a phenomenon remarked upon by an able Italian scientist in the middle of the last century and by him attributed to some luminous quality that inheres in the clouds themselves. Mr. Middleton was walking along engrossed in thoughts of the scene of domestic bliss he had lately quitted and in dreams of the even more delightful home he hoped to some day enjoy with the young lady of Englewood, when he suddenly became cognizant of four individuals a short distance away, comporting themselves in an unusual and peculiar manner. Cautiously approaching them as quietly as possible, he perceived that it was two robbers despoiling two citizens of their valuables, one pair standing in the middle of the street, one on the sidewalk, the citizens with their hands elevated above their heads in a strained and uncomfortable attitude, while each robber--with back to him--was pointing a revolver with one hand and turning pockets inside out with the other.

With a resolution and celerity that astonished him, as he afterwards dwelt upon it in retrospect, Mr. Middleton rushed silently upon the nearest robber, him in the street, and dealt him a terrible blow upon the head with the barrel of a pistol. Without a sound, the robber sank to the earth, whereupon the citizen, whether he had lost his head through fear, or thought Mr. Middleton a new and more dangerous outlaw, fled away like the wind. Snatching the bag of valuables in the unconscious thief's hands, Mr. Middleton made toward the other robber, who, to his astonishment, hissed without looking around:

"What did you let your man get away for, you fool? Try and make yourself useful somehow. Hold this swag and cover the man, so I can have both hands and get through quick."

Taking the valuables the robber handed him, Mr. Middleton with calmness and deliberation placed them in his pockets, after which he placed a muzzle of a pistol in the back of the robber's neck and sharply commanded:

"Hands up!"

Up went the robber's hands as if he were a jumping-jack jerked by a string, whereupon his late victim, doubtless animated by the same emotions as those of the other citizens, fled away like the wind, but not in silence, for at every jump he bellowed, "Thieves, murder, help!"

A window slammed up in the house before which they were standing and the glare of an electric bicycle lamp played full upon Mr. Middleton and his prisoner.

"I've got him," said Mr. Middleton, proudly.

"Got him! Got him!" gasped an astonished voice. "Well, of all effrontery! Got him, you miserable thief? The police are coming and they'll get you, and I can identify you, if they don't succeed in nabbing you red-handed."

Shocked and almost paralyzed, Mr. Middleton turned to expostulate with the misled householder, when the robber, seizing the opportunity, fled away like the wind, bellowing at every jump, "Thieves, murder, help!" and as if aroused by the sound of his compatriot's voice, the thief who had been lying unconscious in the street all this while, arose and hastened away, somewhat unsteadily, it is true, yet at a considerable degree of speed.

It did not require any extended reflective processes for Mr. Middleton to tell himself that if he waited for the police, he would be in a very bad plight, for he had the stolen property upon his person, the thieves had gone, and even if the victims were able to say he was not one of the two original thieves--which their disturbed state of mind made most uncertain--they would be likely to declare him a thief notwithstanding, a charge which the stolen property on his person would bear out. The police could now be heard down the street and the householder was making the welkin ring with vociferous shouts. With a sudden access of rage at this individual whose well-intended efforts had thwarted justice and might yet fasten crime upon innocence, Mr. Middleton pointed a pistol at the upper pane of the window where shone the bicycle lamp. There was a roar that shook the air, followed by a crash of glass and the clatter of a dozen bullets upon the brick wall of the house, and a shriek of terror from the householder and the bicycle lamp instantly vanished. With a heart strangely at peace in the midst of the dangers that encompassed him, Mr. Middleton sped up the street, dashed through an alleyway, back for a block on the next street in the direction he had just come, and thenceforth leisurely and with an appearance of virtue he did not need to feign, made his way home without molestation.

Upon examining the booty that had so strangely come into his possession, Mr. Middleton was at a loss to think which were the greater villains, those who had robbed, or those who had been robbed. One wallet contained five hundred and forty dollars in greenbacks and some memoranda accompanying it showed that it was a corruption fund to be used in bribing voters at an approaching election. The other wallet contained sixty dollars and a detailed plan for bribery, fraud, and intimidation which was to be carried out in one of the doubtful wards. There were also some silver coins, and two gold watches bearing no names or marks that could identify their owners, but the detailed plan contained the name of the politician who had drawn it up and who was to be benefited by its successful accomplishment. This was a clue by following which Mr. Middleton might have found the parties who had been robbed and return their property, but he was deterred from doing so by several considerations. The knowledge he had of the proposed fraud was exceedingly dangerous to the interests of one of the political parties and to the personal interests of one of the bosses of that party. It would be clearly to their advantage to have Mr. Middleton jailed and so put where there would be no danger that he would divulge the information in his possession. Besides this, the money was to be used for corrupt purposes, would go into the hands of evil men who would spend it evilly. Deprived of it, a thoroughly bad man was less likely to be elected. For these moral and prudential reasons, Mr. Middleton saw that it was plainly his duty to the public and to himself to retain the money. The victims, bearing in mind that the recovery of the money by the police would also mean the discovery of the incriminating documents and that any persecution of the robbers might incite them to sell the documents to the opposite party, would be very chary about doing or saying anything. But there was the householder, who surely would tell his tale and who had an idea of Mr. Middleton's personal appearance. Accordingly, that excellent young man disposed of the gold watches to one Isaac Fiscovitz on lower State Street, and with the results of the exchange purchased an entirely new suit, new hat, and new shoes. The incriminating documents, he placed under the carpet in his room against a time when he might see an opportunity to safely dispose of them to the pecuniary advantage of himself and to the discomfiture of the contemptible creature whose handiwork they were.

He said nothing of these transactions when on the appointed evening he once more sat in the presence of the urbane prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having handed him a bowl of delicately flavored sherbet, Achmed began the narration of The Adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson.

_The Adventure of Miss Clarissa Dawson._

Miss Clarissa Dawson was a young lady who had charge of the cutlery counter in one of the great emporiums of State Street. She was reckoned of a pretty wit and not more cutting were the Sheffield razors that were piled before her than the remarks she sometimes made to those who, incited thereto by her reputation for readiness of retort, sought to engage her in a contest of repartee. It was seldom that she issued from these encounters other than triumphant, leaving her presumptuous opponents defeated and chagrined. But in the month of November of the last year, for once she owned to herself that she had been overcome,--overcome, it is true, because her adversary was plainly a person of stupidity, mailed by his doltishness against the keenest sarcasm she could launch against him, yet nevertheless overcome. To her choicest bit of irony, the individual replied, "Somebody left you on the grindstone and forgot to take you off," to which the most adroit in quips and quirks could find no fitting replication, unless it were to indulge in facial contortion or invective, and Miss Clarissa was too much of a lady to do either. Forced into silence, she had no resource but to seek to transfix him with a protracted and contemptuous stare, which, though failing to disconcert the object, put her in possession of the facts that he had mild blue eyes, that the remnants of his hair were red, that he was slightly above middle height and below middle age, and that there was little about his face and still less his figure to distinguish him from a multitude of men of the average type. Indeed, one could not even conjecture his nationality, for his type was one to be seen in all branches of the Indo-European race. If from a package in his upper left-hand coat pocket, which, broken, disclosed some wieners, you concluded he was of the German nation, a short dudeen in an upper vest pocket would seem to indicate that he was an Irishman. His coat was of black cheviot, new, and of the current cut. His vest was of corduroy, of the kind in vogue in the past decade, while his pantaloons, black, with a faint green line in them, were a compromise, being of a non-commital cut that would never be badly out of style in any modern period.

Sustaining Miss Clarissa's stare with great composure, he purchased six German razors at thirty-five cents each, six English at fifty, twelve American at the same price, and a stray French razor at sixty-two.

"Don't you want some razorine?" asked Miss Clarissa. "It makes razors--and other things--sharper."

"Why don't you use it, then, instead of lobsterine?" replied the stranger, picking up his package and the change. Miss Clarissa deigning to give no reply but an angry frown, the stranger expressed his gratitude for the amusement he intimated she had afforded him and he further said he hoped he would see her at the Charity Ball and he made bold to ask her to save the second two-step for him, and thereafter departed, having declined Miss Clarissa's offer to have his purchases sent to his address, an offer dictated not by a spirit of accommodation and kindliness, but by a desire to learn in what part of the city he had his residence.

On the morrow again came a man to purchase razors, of which there was a large number on Miss Clarissa's counter, traveling men's samples for sale at ridiculous prices. The man had purchased two dozen razors before Miss Clarissa, noting this similarity to the transactions of the odious person and thereby led to take a good look at him, observed with astonishment that this new man had on exactly the same suit that had been worn by the purchaser of the day before. She recognized the fabric, the color, everything down to a discoloration on the left coat lapel. Here the resemblance ended. The second individual was a young man. He had a heavy shock of abundant hair. He was not more than twenty-eight years old and so far from being commonplace, he was of a distinguished appearance. But as the eyes of Miss Clarissa continued to dwell upon him in some admiration, she told herself that the resemblance did not end with the clothes, after all. His eyes were of the same blue, his hair of the same auburn as those of the man of yesterday. Indeed, the man of yesterday might have been this man with twenty years added on him, with the light of hope and ambition dimmed by contact with the world, and his youthful alertness and dash succeeded by the resigned vacuity of one who has seen none of his early dreams realized. Again did Miss Clarissa ask if he would have his purchases sent to his address, but this time it was not entirely curiosity and the perfunctory performance of a duty, for she would gladly have been of service to one of such a pleasing presence. Communing with himself for a moment, the young man said:

"On the whole, you may. But they must be delivered to me in person, into my own hands. I would take them, but I have a number of other things to take. Remember, they are to be delivered to me in person," and he handed her a card which announced that his name was Asbury Fuller and on which was written in lead pencil the address of a house in a quarter of the city which, once the most fashionable of all, had suffered from the encroachments of trade and where a few mansions yet occupied by the aristocracy were surrounded by the deserted homes of families which had fled to the newer haunts of fashion, leaving their former abodes to be occupied by boarding mistresses, dentists, doctors, clairvoyants, and a whole host of folk whose names would never be in the papers until their burial permits were issued.

Miss Clarissa did a very peculiar thing. It was already four o'clock of a Saturday afternoon. Instead of immediately giving the package into the hands of the delivery department, she retained it and, at closing time, going to the room where ready made uniforms for messenger boys were kept, she purloined one. Now it must be known that the principal reason for doing a thing so unusual, not to say indiscreet, was her desire to obey the young man's injunction to hand the razors into his own hands and no others. She had become possessed of the idea that some disaster would befall if the razors came into the possession of any one else. Moreover, the stranger had humbled her in the contest of repartee, which, as a true woman, had made her entertain an admiration for him, and this and his strange disguises and his unaccountable purchases had surrounded him with a mist of romantic mystery she fain would penetrate. Some little time before, it had been Miss Clarissa's misfortune, through sickness, to lose much of her hair. It had now begun to grow again and resume its former luxuriant abundance, but by removing several switches--of her own hair--and the bolster commonly called a rat, and sleeking her hair down hard with oil, she appeared as a boy might who was badly in need of a haircut. After a light supper, she set out alone for the residence of Asbury Fuller and at the end of her journey found herself at the gateway of a somber edifice, which was apparently the only one in the block that was inhabited. On either side and across the way were vacant houses, lonesome and forbidding. Indeed, the residence of Asbury Fuller was itself scarcely less lonesome and forbidding. The grass of the plot before it was long and unkempt and heavily covered with mats of autumn leaves. The bricks of the front walk were sunken and uneven and the steps leading to the high piazza were deeply warped, as by pools of water that had lain and dried on their unswept surface through many seasons. The blinds hung awry and the paint on the great front doors was scaling, and altogether it was a faded magnificence, this of Asbury Fuller. She pulled the handle of the front-door bell and in response to its jangling announcement came a maid.

"Asbury Fuller?" said the maid, omitting the "Mr." Miss Clarissa had affixed. "Go to the side door around to the right."

Wondering if this were a lodging house and Asbury Fuller had a private entrance, or if it being his own house he had left word that callers should be sent to the side door to prevent the delivery of the razors being seen by others, Clarissa followed the walk through an avenue of dead syringa bushes and came to the side door. The same maid who had met her before, ushered her in and presently she found herself in a small apartment, almost a closet, standing at the back of Asbury Fuller. But though small, she remarked that the apartment was one of some magnificence, for on all sides was a quantity of burnished copper, binding the edges of a row of shelves and covering the whole top of a broad counter-like projection running along one side of the wall. Before this, Asbury Fuller was standing, assorting a number of cut-glass goblets of various sizes and putting them upon silver salvers, bottles of various colored wines being placed upon each salver with the goblets. He turned at her entrance and the look of sad and gloomy abstraction sitting upon his countenance instantly changed to one of relief and joy.

"At last, at last," he exclaimed, in a deep tone which even more than his countenance betrayed his relief and joy. "It is almost too late and I thought the young woman had not attended to sending them, that she had failed me."

"She would not fail you, sir," said Clarissa, earnestly, allowing herself in the protection her assumed character gave her the pleasure of giving utterance to her feeling of regard for the young man. "She would not fail, sir, she could not fail you. Oh, you wrong her, if you think she could ever break her word to you."

Asbury Fuller bent an inscrutable look upon Clarissa and then bidding her remain until his return, hastily left the room. But though he was gone, Clarissa sat gloating upon the mental picture of his manly beauty. He seemed taller than before, for the stoop he had worn in the afternoon had now departed and he stood erect and muscular in the suit of full evening dress that set off his lithe, soldierly form to such advantage. His garb was of an elegance such as Clarissa had never before beheld, and it was plain that the aristocracy affected certain adornments in the privacy of their homes which they did not caparison themselves with in public. Clarissa had seen dress suits in restaurants and in theaters, but never before had she seen a bottle-green dress coat with gold buttons and a velvet collar and a vest with broad longitudinal stripes of white and brown. In a brief space, Asbury Fuller returned, and glancing at his watch, he said:

"There is some time before the dinner party begins and I would like to talk with you. I am impressed by your apparent honesty and particularly by the air of devotion to duty that characterizes you. The latter I have more often remarked in women than in the more selfish sex to which we belong. We need a boy here. Wages, twenty dollars a month and keep."

"Oh, sir, I should be pleased to come."

"Your duties will commence at once. Owing to the fact that this old house has been empty for some time and the work of rehabilitating and refurnishing it is far from completed, you cannot at present have a room to yourself. You will sleep with John Klussmann, the hostler----"

"Oh, sir, I cannot do that," exclaimed Clarissa, starting up in alarm.

"John is a good boy and kicks very little in his sleep. But doubtless you object to the smell of horses."

"Oh, sir, let me do what is needed this evening and go home and I will come back and work to-morrow and go home to-morrow night, and if by that time you find I can have a room by myself, perhaps I will come permanently."

"I don't smell of horses myself," said Asbury Fuller, musingly, to which Clarissa making no response other than turning away her head to hide her blushes, he continued. "But two days will be enough. Indeed, to-night is the crucial point. I will not beat about the bush longer. I wish to attach you to my interests. I wish you to serve me to-night in the crisis of my career."

"Oh, sir," said Clarissa, in the protection that her assumed character gave her, allowing herself the privilege of speaking her real sentiments, "I am attached to your interests. Let me serve you. Command, and I will use my utmost endeavor to obey."

Asbury Fuller looked at her in surprise. Carried away by her feelings and in the state of mental exaltation which the romance and mystery of the adventure had induced, she had made a half movement to kneel as she thus almost swore her fealty in solemn tones.

"Why are you attached to my interests?" asked Asbury Fuller, somewhat dryly.

Alas, Clarissa could not take advantage of the protection her assumed character gave her to tell the real reason. Only as a woman could she do that, only as a woman could she say and be believed, "Because I love you."

"Why, some people are naturally leaders, naturally draw others to them----"

"You cannot be a spy upon me, since no one knows who I am."

"A spy!" cried Clarissa, in a voice whose sorrowful reproach gave convincing evidence of her ingenuousness.

"I wrong you, I wrong you," said Asbury Fuller. "I will trust you. I will tell you what you are to do----"

"Butler," said a maid, poking her head in at the door, "it is time to come and give the finishing touches to the table. It is almost time for the dinner to be served," and without ado, Asbury Fuller sprang out of the room.

A butler! A butler! Clarissa sat stunned. It was thus that her hero had turned out. Could she tell the other girls in the store with any degree of pride that she was keeping company with a butler? She had received a good literary education in the high school at Muncie, Indiana, and was a young woman of taste and refinement. Could she marry a butler? To be near her hero, she herself had just now been willing to undertake a menial position. But she had then imagined him to be a person of importance. This stage in her cogitations led her to the reflection that her feelings were unworthy of her. Had her regard for Asbury Fuller been all due to the belief that he was a person of importance, merely the worship of position, the selfish desire and hope--however faint--of rising to affluence and social dignity through him? Butler or no butler, Asbury Fuller was handsome, he was distinguished, his manner of speech was superior to that of any person she had ever known. Butler or no butler, she loved him. Just now she had hoped that he, rich and well placed, would overlook her poverty, and take her, friendless and obscure, for his bride. Could she give less than she had hoped he would give? And then as butler, her chances of winning him were so greatly increased.

In a short time, he returned. He told her she was to wait on the table and instructed her how to serve the courses.

"The master will look surprised when he sees you instead of me. If he asks who you are, say the new page. But he will be too much afraid of exciting the wonder of his guests to ask you any questions. I feel certain that he will accept your presence without question, being desirous his guests shall not think him a tyro in the management of an establishment like this. I feel certain that after dinner, his guests will ask to see his collection of arms. Indeed, Miss Bording told him in my hearing last Monday that she accepted his invitation here on condition that she be allowed to see the famous collection. You are to follow them into the drawing-room after dinner. The master will not know whether that is usual or not. If they do start to go to look at the arms, you are to say, 'The collection of your former weapons, sir, has been placed in the first room to the left at the head of the stairs. The paper-hangers and decorators have been busy.' Then you are to lead the way into that room, which you will find dimly lighted. After that, I will attend to everything myself."

Although Clarissa could not but wonder at the strangeness of her instructions and to be somewhat alarmed at the evidences of a plot in which she was to be an agent, she agreed, for though her regard for Asbury Fuller would have been sufficient to cause such acquiescence, so great was her curiosity to have solved the mysteries which surrounded that individual, that this alone would have gained her consent.

There were but two guests at the table of Mr. William Leadbury--Judge Volney Bording, and his daughter, Eulalia Bording. Mr. Leadbury cast a look of surprise and displeasure as he saw Clarissa serving the first course, but he quickly concealed these emotions and proceeded to plunge into an animated conversation with his guests. Indeed, it assumed the character of a monologue in which he frequently adverted to the weather, to be off on a tangent the next moment on a discussion of finance, politics, sociology, on which subjects, however, he was far from showing the positiveness and fixed opinion that he did while descanting upon the weather. In all the subjects he touched upon, he exhibited a certain skill in so framing his remarks that they would not run counter to any prejudices or opposite opinions of his auditors, but the feelings of the auditors having been elicited, served as a preamble from which he could go on, warmly agreeing with their views in the further and more complete unfolding of his own. He was between twenty-seven and thirty years of age, of a somewhat spare figure, and in the well-proportioned features of his face there was no one that would attract attention beyond the others and easily remain fixed in memory. He was not without an appearance of intelligence and his chest was thrown out and the small of his back drawn in after the manner of the Prussian ex-sergeants who give instruction in athletics and the cultivation of a proper carriage to the elite of this city, and withal he had the appearance of a person of substance and of consequence in his community. In the midst of a pause where he was occupied in putting his soup-spoon into his mouth, Miss Bording remarked:

"Please do not talk about commonplace American subjects, Mr. Leadbury. Tell us of your foreign life. Tell us of Algeria. What sort of a country is Algeria?"

Turning his eyes toward the chandelier about him and with an elegance of enunciation that did much to relieve the undeniably monotonous evenness of his discourse, he began:

"Algeria, the largest and most important of the French colonial possessions, is a country of northern Africa, bounded on the north by the Mediterranean, west by Morocco, south by the desert of Sahara, and east by Tunis. It extends for about five hundred and fifty miles along the coast and inland from three hundred to four hundred miles. Physiographically it may be roughly divided into three zones," and so on for a considerable length until by an accident which Clarissa could attribute to nothing but inconceivable awkwardness, Judge Bording dropped a glass of water, crash! Having ceased his disquisition at this accident, so disconcerting to the judge, Miss Bording very prettily and promptly thanked him for his information and saying that she now had a clear understanding of the principal facts pertaining to Algeria, abruptly changed the subject by asking him if he had heard anything more concerning his second cousin, the barber.

"There is nothing more to be heard. He is dead. You know he came here about a week before I did. By the terms of my uncle's will, the five years to be allowed to elapse before I was to be considered dead or disappeared would have come to an end in a week after the time of my arrival, and the property have passed to him, my uncle's cousin. By the greatest luck in the world, I had become homesick and throwing up my commission in the Foreign Legion, or Battalion D'Etranger, as we have it in French, which is, as you may know, a corps of foreigners serving under the French flag, mainly in Algeria, but occasionally in other French possessions--throwing up my commission, I came home, bringing with me my famous collection of weapons and the fauteuil of Ab del Kader, the armchair, you understand, of the great Arab prince who led the last revolt against France. It was not all homesickness, either. Among the men of all nationalities serving in the Foreign Legion, are many adventurous Americans, and a young Chicagoan, remarking my name, apprised me of the fact that perhaps I was heir to a fortune in Chicago. I came," continued Leadbury, looking down toward his lap, where Clarissa saw he held a clipping from a newspaper, "and took apartments at the Bennington Hotel, where, when seen by the representatives of the 'Commercial Advertiser,' the following interesting facts were brought out in the interview: 'William Leadbury'--your humble servant--" he interjected, "'is the only son of the late Charles Leadbury, only brother of the late millionaire iron merchant, James Leadbury. Upon his death, James Leadbury left his entire property'--but," said Leadbury, looking up, "I have previously covered that point."

"But tell us of your weapons," interposed Miss Bording.

"Oh, yes, that seems to interest you," and deftly sliding the clipping along in his fingers, he resumed: "'The collection of weapons is one of the most interesting and remarkable collections in the United States, for, though not large, its owner can say, with pardonable pride, "every bit of steel in that collection has been used by me in my trade."'"

"Ah, how proud you must be," mused Miss Bording. "I read something like that in the papers, myself. Just to think of it! Every bit of steel in that collection has been used by you in your trade. What a strange affectation you military men have in calling your profession a trade! But, Captain Leadbury, tell me of your cousin, who disappeared two days after your arrival, and why you shaved your moustache which the papers described you as having."

"A moustache is a bother," said Leadbury. "As to my cousin, why, overcome by disappointment, he took to drink. He disappeared from his lodgings on Rush Street two days after my arrival, at the close of a twenty-four hours' debauch. It was found he had shipped as a sailor on the Ingar Gulbrandson, lumber hooker for Marinette, and the Gulbrandson was found sunk up by Death's Door, at the entrance to Green Bay, her masts sticking above water. Her crew had utterly disappeared. That was three months ago and neither hide nor hair of any of them has been seen since. Poor Anderson Walkley is dead! Were he alive, I would be glad to assist him. But he was a rover, never long in one place--a few months here, a few months there--and now he is at rest and I believe he is glad, I believe he is glad."

The second course consisted of turkey, and Clarissa was astounded, as she deposited the dishes of the course, to see Asbury Fuller swiftly enter the door upon all-fours and with extreme celerity and cat-like lightness, flit across the room and esconce himself behind a huge armchair upholstered in velvet, and her astonishment increased and was tinged with no small degree of terror, as she observed the chair, noiselessly and almost imperceptibly, progress across the floor, propelled by some hidden force, until it reached a station behind the master of the house. Captain Leadbury began to carve the turkey and Clarissa was astonished more than ever to hear, in the Captain's voice, though she was sure his lips were shut,

"Would you like a close shave, Miss Bording?"

The sound of the carving-knife dropping upon the platter as Leadbury started in some sudden spasm of pain, was drowned by the silvery laughter of Miss Bording, saying,

"Oh, don't make fun of the profession of your poor cousin, Captain," and the look of disquiet upon Leadbury's face was quickly relieved and he joined heartily and almost boisterously in the merriment. A moment later, Clarissa was alarmed to find him bending upon herself a look in which suspicion, distrust, fear, and hatred all were blended.

Judge Volney Bording, ornament to the legal profession, was a hearty eater, and it was not long before he sent his plate for a second helping, and again Clarissa heard from the closed lips of Leadbury, in a voice that seemed to float up from his very feet:

"Next. Next. You're next, Miss Bording. What'll it be?"

Leadbury half rose, looking toward Clarissa with a glance of most violent anger, but whatever he would have said, was again interrupted by the silvery laugh of Miss Bording, and again Leadbury joined heartily, almost boisterously. But though he regained his self-possession and his brow became serene, Clarissa saw in his eye that which told he had a reckoning in store for her when once the guests were out of the house, but that in the meantime he would dissemble the various unpleasant emotions with which his mind was filled. The rest of the dinner passed without untoward event. The huge armchair by imperceptible degrees retired to its former position, and as Clarissa set down the dessert, she saw Asbury Fuller, with a grace unusual and not to be expected of one in such a posture, proceeding quickly and silently out of the room upon all-fours.

Mindful of her instructions, Clarissa accompanied the party when, rising from the table, they withdrew to the drawing-room. It was manifest that her presence caused Leadbury some uneasiness and he looked now at her and now at his guests with an inquiring and perturbed countenance, but in the calm faces of the judge and his daughter he could detect nothing to indicate that they thought the presence of the page at all strange, and little by little he recovered his good spirits and related some interesting anecdotes of a bulldog he once owned and of a colored person who stole a guitar from him. But though Miss Bording gave a courteous and interested attention and laughed at the anecdotes of the dog, she irked at the necessity of silence, which the garrulity of her host placed her under and was desirous of having the conversation become general and of a more entertaining, elevated and instructive character. As the narration of the episode of the colored person came to an end, she hastily exclaimed:

"Captain, you promised to show us your collection. It is nearing the time when we must go home, for father has had to-day to listen to an unparalleled amount of gabble and is very tired."

"I will show the collection to you with great pleasure," said Leadbury, and at this juncture, Clarissa, remembering her instructions, said:

"The collection of your former weapons, sir, has been placed in the first room at the left at the head of the stairs. The paperhangers and decorators have been busy." And then she proceeded to lead the way into the hall and up the broad funereal staircase that led above. Dimly burned the lights in the hall. Dimly burned a gas jet in the room whose door stood open at the left.

"Oh, yes," said Leadbury, gaily, responding to a remark of Miss Bording, as they entered the room and saw the uncertain shape of a large chair vaguely looming in the gloom; "I secured the fauteuil of Ab del Kader after we had stormed the last stronghold of that unfortunate prince. But interesting as this relic is, I put no value upon it in comparison with the weapons, for every bit of steel in the collection has been used by me in my trade."

As he said these words, he turned on the gas at full head and the light blazed forth to be shot back from an array of polished steel festooned upon the wall, a glittering rosette, but not of sabres and scimetars, yataghans, rapiers, broadswords, dirks and poniards, pistols, fusils and rifles. No! _Razors and scissors!_ Before this array sat a great red velvet barber's chair, and near them on the wall was a board, bearing little brass hooks, upon each of which hung a green ticket.

In the unexpected revelation that had followed the flare of light, all eyes were turned upon William Leadbury, swaying back and forward with one hand clinging to the big chair, as if ready to swoon. A sickly, cringing grin played over his face, suddenly come all a-yellow, and his long tongue was flickering over his pale lips. But all at once his muscles sprang tense and a malignant anger tightened his quivering features and turning upon Clarissa, he hissed:

"You did this. You exposed me, you exposed me," and he was about to leap at the terrified girl, when a ringing voice cried, "Stop!" and there was Asbury Fuller standing in the doorway with the broad red cordon of a Commander of the Legion of Honor across his breast and a glittering rapier in his hand. Clarissa could have fallen at his feet, he looked so handsome and grand, and she could have scratched out the eyes of Eulalia Bording, whose gaze betrayed an admiration equal to her own. Asbury Fuller, yet not wearing quite his wonted appearance, for the luxuriant locks of auburn had gone and his head was covered with a short, though thick crop of chestnut.

"You exposed yourself. Harmless would all this have been, powerless to hurt you, if you had kept your self-possession and turned it off as a joke--your own. But your abashed mien, your complete confusion, your utter disconcertment, betrayed you, even if you had no longer left any question by crying out that you have been exposed. Yes, exposed, Anderson Walkley, by the sudden confronting of you with the implements of your craft, the weapons you had _used_ in _your_ trade, and the belief thus aroused in your guilty mind that your secret was known, that your identity had been detected."

"Asbury Fuller, what business is it of yours?" and Leadbury snatched up a large pair of hair clippers and waved them with a menacing gesture.

"Everyman to the weapons of his trade," exclaimed Asbury Fuller, and the hair clippers seemed suddenly enveloped in a mass of white flame, as the rapier played about them. Cling, clang, across the room flew the clippers, twisted from Leadbury's hand as neatly as you please.

"Asbury Fuller?" cried the Commander of the Legion of Honor. "Asbury Fuller?" and he deftly fastened beneath his nose an elegant false moustache with waxed ends.

With his hands before his eyes as if to forefend his view from some dreadful apparition, the man in the corner sank upon his knees, gibbering, "William Leadbury, come back from the dead!"

"William Leadbury, alive and well, here to claim his own from you, Anderson Walkley, outlaw and felon. Your plans were well-laid, but I am not dead. You signed the papers of the Ingar Gulbrandson in your proper person. Then as she was about to sail, I was brought aboard ostensibly drunk, but really drugged, under the name of Anderson Walkley. The Gulbrandson was found sunk. Her crew of four had utterly disappeared. Dead, of course. The records gave their names. I had become Anderson Walkley and was dead. You had seized my property and my identity. I had been in Chicago but two days and no one had become familiar enough with my appearance to make any question when you with your clean-shaven face came down on the morning after my kidnaping and told the people at the hotel that you were William Leadbury and had shaved your moustache off over night. Whatever difference they might have thought they saw, was easily explained by the change occasioned by the removal of your moustache. Had your minions been as intelligent as they were villainous, your scheme would have succeeded. It was necessary to drug me anew on the voyage, as the effects were wearing off. They did not drug me enough, and when they scuttled the old hulk and rowed ashore to flee with their blood money, the cold water rising in the sinking vessel awoke me, brought me to full consciousness, and I easily got ashore on some planking. I saw at once what the plot had been. I realized I had a desperate man to deal with. I had no money and it would take me some time to get from northern Wisconsin to Chicago. In the meantime, every one would have come to believe you William Leadbury, and who would believe me, the ragged tramp, suddenly appearing from nowhere and claiming to be the heir? You would be coached by your lawyers, have time to concoct lies, to manufacture conditions that would color your claim, and in court you would be self-possessed and on your guard. Therefore I felt that I must await the psychological moment when you could be taken off your guard, when, surprised and in confusion, you would betray yourself. I secured employment as your butler, the psychological moment came, and you stand, self-convicted, thief and would-be murderer."

"Send for the police at once," said Judge Bording.

"No," said the late captain in the Foreign Legion. "He may reform. I wish him to have another chance. That he may have the wherewithal to earn a livelihood, I present him with the contents of this room, the means of his undoing. In my uncle's library are many excellent theological works of a controversial nature, and these, too, I present to him, as a means of turning his thoughts toward better things. I will not send for the police. I will send for a dray. Judge Bording, by the recent concatenation of events, I am become the host. Let us leave Walkley here to pack his effects, and return to the drawing-room."

Clarissa preceded the others as they slowly descended, with all her ears open to hear whatsoever William Leadbury might say to Eulalia Bording, and it was so that she noted a strange little creaking above them, and looking up, saw poised upon the edge of the balustrade in the upper hall, impending over the head of William Leadbury and ready to fall, the great barber chair! With a swift leap, she pushed him to the wall, causing him to just escape the chair as it fell with a dreadful crash. But she herself was not so fortunate, for with a wicked tunk the cushioned back of the chair struck her a glancing blow that felled her senseless upon the stairs.

Judge Bording flew after the dastardly barber, who swifter still, was down the backstairs and out of the house into the darkness before the Judge could lay hands upon him.

The judge, his daughter, and William Leadbury, bent over the unconscious form of the page.

"He saved your life," said the judge. "The wood and iron part would have hit your head."

"His breath is knocked out of him," said Miss Bording.

"He saved my life. I cannot understand his strange devotion. I cannot understand it," said William Leadbury, the while opening the page's vest, tearing away his collar, and straining at his shirt, that the stunned lungs might have play and get to work again. The stiffly starched shirt resisted his efforts and he reached in under it to detach the fastenings of the studs that held the bosom together. Back came his hand as if it had encountered a serpent beneath that shirt front.

"I begin to understand," he exclaimed, and bending an enigmatical look upon the startled judge and his daughter, he picked the page up in his arms with the utmost tenderness, and bore him away.

* * * * *

The pains in Clarissa's body had left her. Indeed, they had all but gone when on Sunday morning, after a night which had been one of formless dreams where she had not known whether she slept or waked or where she was, a frowsy maid had called her from the bed where she lay beneath a blanket, fully dressed, and told her it was time she was getting back to the city. Not a sign of William Leadbury as she passed out of the great silent house. Not a word from him, no inquiry for the welfare of the little page who had come so nigh dying for him. Clarissa was too proud to do or say anything to let the frowsy maid guess that she wondered at this or cared aught for the ungrateful captain. She steeled her heart against him, but though as the days went by she succeeded in ceasing to care for one who was so unworthy of her regard, she could not stifle the poignant regret that he was thus unworthy.

It had come Friday evening, almost closing time in the great store. Slowly and heavily, Clarissa was setting her counter in order, preparing to go to her lodgings and nurse her sick heart until slumber should give respite from her pain, when there came a messenger from the dress-making department asking her presence there.

"We've just got an order for a ready-made ball-dress for a lady that is unexpectedly going to the Charity Ball to-night," said Mrs. McGuffin, head of the department. "The message says the lady is just your height and build and color--she noticed you sometime, it seems--and that we are to fit one of the dresses to you, making such alterations as would make it fit you, choosing one suitable to your complexion. When it's done, to save time, you are to go right to the person who ordered it, without stopping to change your clothes. You can do that there. It will make her late to the ball, at best. A carriage and a person to conduct you will be waiting."

It was a magnificent dress that was gradually built upon the figure of Clarissa, and when at last it was completed and she stood before the great pier glass flushed with the radiance of a pleasure she could not but feel despite her late sorrow and the fact she was but the lay figure for a more fortunate woman, one would have to search far to find a more beautiful creature.

"Whyee!" exclaimed Mrs. McGuffin. "Why, I had no idea you had such a figure. Why, I must have you in my department to show off dresses on. You will work at the cutlery counter not a day after to-morrow. But there, I am keeping you. The ball must almost have begun. Here's a bag with your things in it. I was going to say, 'your other things.'" And throwing a splendid cloak about the lovely shoulders of Miss Clarissa, Mrs. McGuffin turned her over to the messenger.

There was already somebody in the carriage into which Clarissa stepped, but as the curtain was drawn across the opposite window, she was unable to even conjecture the sex of the individual who was to be her conductor to her destination, and steeped in dreams which from pleasant ones quickly passed to bitter, she speedily forgot all about the person at her side. But presently she perceived their carriage had come into the midst of a squadron of other carriages charging down upon a brilliantly lighted entrance where men and women, brave in evening dress, were moving in.

"Why, we are going to the ball-room itself," and as she said this and realized that here on the very threshold of the entrancing gayeties she was to put off her fine plumage and see the other woman pass out of the dressing-room into the delights beyond, while she crept away in her own simple garb amid the questioning, amused, and contemptuous stares of the haughty dames who had witnessed the exchange, she broke into a piteous sob.