Chapter III: Part 3

As I sat watching the changing crowd I heard some men at the next table talking of a man sitting over in a corner who once had a fortune that he had won by forecasting events, but whose gift had left him suddenly, and now his money was gone and he was without a friend.

I looked over toward the corner curiously. Leaning against one of the supporting pillars of the low-studded room, I saw a pale, weary-looking man. I did not need to look at the glass on the table to learn what he was drinking. I recognized by that sallow skin, the frequent convulsive starts, and the little catch in his breathing, an habitual _absintheur_.

He sat apart from the others, and no one spoke to him during the evening. Occasionally he ordered drink, and then sat for several minutes watching lovingly the green, opalescent lights in the liquid before him.

I had forgotten all about him, when, chancing to glance in his direction a few minutes later, I saw that an altercation was taking place. The Prophet was having an argument with the waiter over the payment of his bill. I saw him thrust his hand in his pockets, searching desperately for a coin, but in vain.

Hoping that perhaps I might learn something of the man’s story, I arose, and, sitting down opposite him, I threw out a few coins, telling the waiter to take out the payment of my friend’s bill, and to bring us a bottle of Vie de Anise.

Do you think he was offended? You do not know the action of that insidious poison. Honor, ambition, everything, are but as baubles to the devotee of absinthe.

“Vie de Anise, did you say?” he asked, eagerly, leaning over the table. “It is years since I have tasted any of that.”

I sat with him until nearly midnight; but try as I would I could not draw the man out. Several times I skillfully directed the conversation in the desired channel, but each time he as skillfully eluded me.

He was in terrible condition. His nerves were completely shattered. He could scarcely sit still for a minute; and his hand shook so, as he raised the glass to his lips, that the green liquor spilled and ran over on to the sawdust floor. At last, as it was nearly time for the place to close, I asked him point-blank to tell me the story of his life.

He looked at me strangely. I do not know, it may have been the drink, but someway he did not look like the man I had sat down with a few hours before. The tired, weary look had completely disappeared, his face was flushed, and his eyes were as bright as a child’s.

“Not to-night,” he said, in answer to my request, “but sometime. Sometime when I can prove to you my right to the title, I will tell you why they used to call me The Prophet. For, sometime, the gift will come back to me again.” He leaned over the table and looked me full in the face with those unnaturally bright eyes as he whispered: “It is coming back soon, I can feel it. The false prophet shall redeem himself.”

I did not see the man again for many weeks, for I was busy with other things. One night, however, I dropped into the place and seated myself in a corner. I had scarcely taken off my gloves when I felt some one touch me on the shoulder, and, as I looked up, I saw the Prophet standing near. I scarcely recognized him, he was so changed. His cheeks had great sunken places in them, and the skin had a waxy and corpse-like appearance. But his eyes were brighter than ever before as he said, eagerly:

“It has come back again, as I told you it would. To-night I will tell you the story you wished to know before. Where have you been so long?”

I told him that I had been very busy since I last saw him, and, ordering a bottle of his favorite drink, I waited with interest for what I felt must prove a strange and interesting tale. He waited till the liquor came, and, after taking a deep draught, he told me the following story:

“You have probably heard the men here telling how I used to be a prophet and could foretell events, and that once I failed. What you have not heard, though, is how I came to fail; but I will tell you to-night. I did not always have the gift, neither did I study and cultivate it. It came to me as an inspiration,--and I abused that gift,” he added, sadly.

“The first time was just before de Arnault was killed. As I sat at this very table drinking, a peculiar feeling came over me, a kind of exaltation. I seemed to be drifting out of myself and to have no part with my surroundings. Then, gradually, I began to see a great crowd in a public square. A man was sitting in a carriage near the Arch of Triumph, reviewing some troops. I could not see his face, for there was a mist about it. Suddenly, out of the crowd, I saw a man working his way toward the carriage. He reached it, and, drawing a revolver from his pocket, he fired three shots full at the breast of the man in the carriage. Then the mist which had been about his face cleared, and I recognized the Count de Arnault.

“When I came to myself the waiter was standing by my chair asking if I were ill. I must have been acting queerly, for as I went out everyone looked at me curiously.

“Someway, strange as it probably seems to you, I did not pay much attention to the vision, for my brain is not exactly right, and I see many things after I have been drinking which would frighten most men. Imagine my horror a week later, however, when, as the Count was reviewing the Imperial troops at the Place de la Concorde, I saw enacted in reality what I had seen in my vision.

“Then, for a year, I had those strange visitations, during which future events were revealed to me exactly as they were to occur. I gained a reputation here in the Rivola, for during the Franco-Prussian war I foretold the defeat of the army at Saarbruck, the retreats at Weissenburg and Worth, the capitulation of Metz, and the fatal disaster at Sedan. It was this war that was my ruin. The money which before I could scarcely scrape together came to me now by the purse. I was consulted on every great occasion, and my prophecies were paid for in gold.

“Do you realize what a gift I had?” he cried, becoming excited. “I could have done anything, been anything I wished. My fame extended beyond the humble Rivola. I was sought after by all classes, from the lowest to the highest.”

He stopped and remained silent for several minutes, then he began again bitterly. “And because for two long years I never did one worthy thing with the money I earned so easily,--because I made that gift a curse instead of a blessing,--God took it from me. The money that I had saved melted away, and I was soon back again where I had been before, for I would not lie to the people. That is, at first I would not lie to them; but when for two more years I waited and not a vision came to me, I became desperate. I needed money terribly, and I thirsted for my former fame. So, just before the treaty of peace was laid before the National Assembly by Thiers, I told the people that it would not be accepted, and you know how it came out on March 1. My old patrons, who had taken my advice and staked much money on my prophecy, were furious. I was even in a worse position than I had been before. The two years that I had foretold events correctly counted for nothing. I had failed once, and nobody would ever believe me again. I was a False Prophet.

“You do not know how I have lived since then, and I will not tell you. The few sous I have picked up doing menial tasks have been spent here, you know how. Sometimes I have been for days without food, but I could always manage to get a little liquor. But now at last it has come back again. I have a chance to redeem myself, and I shall make such a different use of the gift than I did before. I have had another vision. France is about to undergo another great change. She shall--”

He stopped abruptly, leaned forward against the table, and began to breathe heavily. His eyes lost their bright look, the pupils narrowed to needle points and took on the peculiar, dull appearance of a hypnotized man. Then over his face there stole a look of fear. He turned and glanced toward the bar. Involuntarily I followed his glance, but there were only a couple of sailors talking together. I turned again to my companion. The look of fear had given way to one of absolute horror, and he had thrown up his arm as if to ward off a blow.

“Not that, my God, not that,” he muttered, “just when I was to have redeemed my honor!”

The Prophet was having another vision, of that I was sure. But what could be the impending disaster which could bring on such a look of horror as that?

Then, without a word of warning, he was himself again, and turned to me.

“It is fate,” he said, sadly, “and it must be borne; but it is very hard.”

He waited several minutes, trying to collect himself, then he began again in a low tone:

“I have had my last vision. Soon--I know not when--but I must die. And such a death!” He shuddered and threw up his hand again, involuntarily, as he had done before. “As you and I sit here together at this table, a man will come into the place. He will mistake you for an enemy of his, and will try to kill you; but do not fear, he will not succeed. Promise me,” he pleaded, “that you will take care of me when it is all over.”

I tried to make him leave the place, to promise never to come back again if he thought there were any such danger; but he only shook his head.

“It is no use, it is fate; and who are we to try to interfere with the will of God? I tell you--”

He stopped. Again that look of fear began to come over his face, and I turned to see the cause of his alarm, for he was not in any trance this time.

“For God’s sake, don’t turn round!” he cried.

But it was too late. As I turned, I saw, standing by the bar, a man almost a giant in form. As I looked, he chanced to glance in the mirror behind the bar. He caught my eye, and, in a second, turned and started for our table. Never have I seen such a look of hate on a human face. As he neared our table, he drew a huge knife from his belt.

“So I have found you at last!” he cried. He reached our table and raised that terrible knife, while I sat there, staring stupidly at him, paralyzed with fear.

The arm descended, but, before the knife could reach me, the Prophet had leaped from his chair and thrown himself in the way. Once more I saw that pitiful little gesture of defense. I tried to look away, but could not. I had not moved a muscle since I had first seen the murderer.

With a blow strong enough to have felled an ox, the cruel knife sank deep into the Prophet’s neck, described a circular motion, and came out on the other side, severing the head completely from the body.

The brute, horrified at what he had done, dropped the knife and fled from the place. Then, as if released from the spell which had held me, I came to myself.

I do not know how I did it, but, picking up that ghastly thing from the floor, I rose and told the men assembled of the prophecy which the dead man had made to me a short time before. It may not seem much to you, but I felt that I owed it to the Prophet, to give him back the place among those people which he had formerly held. And to-day, in the Rivola, his name is honored as it was in the old days. It was an awful price to pay, but he paid it; and his reward was, that the stigma of false was forever removed from his name and memory.

The Prophet had redeemed himself.

A STUDY IN PSYCHOLOGY.

A STUDY IN PSYCHOLOGY.

In one corner of his solitary cell, with face buried in his hands, sat Jean Lescaut, wife poisoner, waiting for the morrow on which he would expiate his crimes.

Each hour as the sentry made his rounds, he saw the prisoner sitting in that same hopeless attitude of despair. A month before when he first heard his sentence he had raved and fought impotently. Night after night, and day after day he had paced his narrow cell like a caged animal, but now that was over. Already the shadow of the doom which was so near had fallen upon him.

Presently there was a sound of footsteps, and the prisoner heard two people in conversation coming down the corridor. But he did not stir; events of that day had no interest for him: he was to be electrocuted on the morrow. The steps stopped outside his cell, and he heard the attendant saying, “I am sorry, Doctor Van Horne, but I can give you only an hour. Orders are orders, you know.”

The heavy barred door swung open, was closed and locked again, and the turnkey walked away. Jean Lescaut looked up wearily and without curiosity. He saw a tall clerical gentleman regarding him intently.

“Jean Lescaut,” began the stranger, stepping close to the prisoner, “I have come here to-day to offer you the only thing on earth which you care for--liberty.”

A quick flush of color dyed the prison pallor of the man in irons, then as quickly faded again.

“I am going to offer this to you,” the doctor continued, “not because I think you innocent of the crime of which you were convicted, not because I have any friendship for you, or because I desire to defeat justice. The proposition I make you is purely in the interest of science. Have you ever been hypnotized?”

The prisoner shook his head.

“Have you ever seen anyone in such a condition?”

Lescaut nodded wearily. All this talk irritated him. He wished that the man would stop looking at him so intently and questioning him so much. It reminded him of that other day in the court room when the lawyer for the prosecution had looked at him in just such a way, and asked him so many questions that he had become confused and told many things that he had never intended to tell.

“If you have seen it done, so much the better. You have probably seen persons put under this influence and then undergo tests which you know would be a physical impossibility for them to endure otherwise. I have myself given subjects arsenic, telling them it was sugar, and they felt no bad effects. I have also burned with hot irons and thrust pins into the flesh of such persons without their feeling any pain.

“Now what I have to propose to you, Jean Lescaut, is this,--to-morrow at noon you are to go to the electric chair where 1800 volts of electricity will be sent through your body. At eleven o’clock to-morrow I will come to your cell and put you into an hypnotic sleep. You will go to the chair, show all the symptoms and effects of a person electrocuted, and you will apparently be dead. In reality, however, you will only be asleep. And, as I can easily obtain your body from the prison doctor on the pretense of using it for dissection purposes, I can then awaken you.”

The prisoner leaned over and clutched the doctor’s arm so tightly that he winced. “And what then?” he whispered eagerly.

“Then, as I have just said, I will awaken you. I will have proven that a certain theory of mine is correct or false, and you will have obtained your liberty, for I shall not hinder you from going where you will after the experiment is over. But I must first try and see if I can get control of you. You may not be susceptible to my influence.”

An hour later the turnkey came to inform Van Horne that his hour had expired, and the preliminary trial must have been a success, for there was a smile of triumph on the doctor’s face as he bade the prisoner good day.

Next day an hour previous to the time set for the electrocution of Jean Lescaut, Doctor Van Horne again visited the prisoner in his cell. At twelve o’clock two attendants came and conducted him to the fatal room. The reporters and prison officials present remarked on the calmness of the doomed man. He walked to the chair without assistance, and submitted to the strapping down and adjusting of the sponges and electrodes without a tremor.

When all was ready the warden stepped to the side of the chair. “Jean Lescaut,” said he, “I am about to give the signal for you to be sent into eternity. Have you anything to say?”

The man in the chair shook his head. The warden stepped back out of sight and made a sign to an assistant behind the screen. A switch was thrown on and the voltmeter registered that nearly 2000 volts of electricity were passing through the hooded figure in the chair. The warden held his watch in his hand, glancing first at it, then at Lescaut. At the end of eight seconds he made another sign, and the man at the switch cut off the current.

The prison doctor stepped up from one side and examined the body carefully. “Justice is satisfied. I pronounce Jean Lescaut dead,” he said solemnly, and motioning to two of the attendants, he bade them carry away the body.

That night, in a dissecting room in the suburbs of Albany, a crowd of scientific men assembled at the invitation of Doctor Van Horne to witness an important experiment. No one knew what that experiment was to be; but every one had accepted the invitation, for Van Horne had a high reputation among his colleagues.

When the last expected guest had arrived, the doctor made a few remarks to the company. “I have invited you here to-night,” he said, “to witness an experiment, which, if I am not mistaken, I have the distinction of being the first to attempt. I have to-day taken the law in my own hands; but, if the theory on which I have been working is correct, justice will not be deprived of its victim.

“To-day, one hour previous to his electrocution, I hypnotized Jean Lescaut, the man who poisoned his wife, strangled his child, and who was sentenced to death last July. While under my influence I told him that the current of electricity which would be sent through his body would not kill him, but would only put him to sleep, from which to-night I would awaken him.

“After he was pronounced dead by the prison doctor, I secured his body for dissection, and have had it brought into the next room. Now, if a theory on which I have been working for the last year is correct, the impression which I left on his brain, has kept that electricity from producing death; and, at my command, Jean Lescaut, though to all appearances a corpse, will speak to us to-night.”

There was a stir of expectation among the doctors present as Van Horne stepped into the adjoining room. Presently he returned wheeling a light operating chair, over which a sheet was thrown.

“If everything should not happen in accordance with my theory, of course what happens to-night is under the seal of the profession,” he observed quietly, as he lifted the cloth. “I wish you all to examine this body and state whether or not the man is dead.”

The doctors crowded about the figure in the chair, and used every known means to detect the presence of life in the body. At the end of ten minutes every one declared that Jean Lescaut was dead, that it was impossible to discover a sign of life.

Dr. Van Horne pushed the operating chair with its strange burden directly under the electric light, turning the reflector so that the strong rays fell full on the pallid upturned face. He passed his hands lightly and rapidly over the man’s temples.

“Jean Lescaut,” he said slowly, “can you hear me?” There was no sign of life on the part of the sleeper, and Van Horne repeated his question, speaking more sharply.

Then, hardened though they were by numberless horrible scenes at the operating table, many of the doctors shuddered; for, slowly, indeed so slowly that the motion was barely perceptible, the figure in the chair began to nod its head.

“Answer me,” cried Van Horne, raising his voice, and taking both the man’s hands in his own. One of the doctors, younger than the others, raised the window and thrust his head out into the cold air. The room was becoming oppressive.

Slowly Jean Lescaut’s mouth opened. The lips parted, but no sound came forth.

“Speak,” cried Van Horne sternly.

“I have been executed, I cannot speak. I am dead.” The words came from the man in jerky, spasmodic sentences as if torn from him against his will.

“Tell me, I command you, what has happened since I left you this morning.”

“I am dead,” repeated the murderer in a dull, mechanical tone.

Dr. Van Horne stepped once more to the chair. He held one hand firmly against the man’s forehead. The other he reached down behind the head and pressed at the base of the brain.

Again the man began to speak, this time more rapidly than before, but in a harsh, cackling voice.

“They came and took me from my cell and put me in a chair. They strapped me down, and put sponges on my spine and on my ankles. Then they put ten thousand needles into my body, and I began to grow cold and numb. My heart stopped beating, and I could not breathe. And now I am dead.”

“But you are breathing.”

“And now I am dead,” repeated the other mechanically.

Dr. Van Horne loosened his hands from the man, and turned to the watching group.

“So far I have succeeded,” said he. “So far my theory is correct. The electricity did not produce death in this man because his brain could not receive the sensation. Now I am going to bring him out of the hypnotic state and see if my theory is entirely correct.”

He did not state what that theory was, but stepped back to the man in the chair and began speaking in a low tone. He took both eyelids, and rolling them up, looked straight into the sleeper’s eyes.

“Jean Lescaut,” he cried sharply, “come to yourself! You are no longer asleep.”

For the first time the man moved his body slightly, as if trying to rise. Slowly a bright red spot began to appear on each pallid cheek. His eyes rolled down from under the lids, and the pupils began to dilate.

Then, suddenly, an awful horror came into his face, and without a word of warning, as if impelled by some unseen force, he leaped forward, and fell writhing and twisting on the floor over eight feet away. His arms and legs beat the air and floor for a minute convulsively, then stiffened into strange, grotesque positions.

Dr. Van Horne knelt down beside the body and examined it carefully. Then he stood up and smiled, though he was very pale.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “I was entirely correct in my theory. Had I not expected this ending, I would never have dared to thus violate the law and bring this man back to life. That deadly charge of electricity which was held back from acting by the influence of my hypnotism has at last accomplished its work, as you yourselves just saw. When the numbness produced by hypnotic sleep left the man’s brain, nature began to act, and the shock to the nervous system was all the more powerful because the electricity had changed its form to a static charge. You need not fear; this time he is really dead.”

And thus Jean Lescaut, wife poisoner and perpetrator of a dozen crimes, helped in his expiation of those crimes to advance the cause of science; and justice was not cheated, for the execution of his sentence was merely postponed the matter of a few hours.

THE PAINTED LADY AND THE BOY.

THE PAINTED LADY AND THE BOY.

“Bud Phillips says The Boy is going to the devil,” announced Stebbins, as he strolled into the smoking room at the Sherwood Club, after beating Perkins three games of billiards.

“Well, Bud is certainly in a position to be accurately informed on that subject,” answered the Colonel; and the truth of his reply was so apparent, that everyone smiled.

Bud was night clerk at the Algonquin, the hotel where The Boy had a suite. So he had a chance to see at what hour and how the guests came home. He also knew just how many times a week The Boy’s rooms were a rendezvous for the young subalterns from Fort Blair, who came into town every time they could get leave, to gamble away their month’s scanty pay.

But as Bud Phillips also said, The Boy wasn’t entirely to blame, for he had never had a mother’s care; and, though no one in Preston City except the Colonel and I knew the facts of his early life, everyone had a good word for him, and was inclined to overlook many indiscretions on the part of popular Billy Richards, The Boy.

Colonel Wade and I could remember the day when Stewart Sloan shocked the good people back in Sioux City by bringing home for a wife La Petite Mabelle, skirt dancer from a vaudeville theatre in Des Moines. The predictions of the sewing-club gossips were more than fulfilled, for La Petite Mabelle ran away one fine day before the year was up, leaving Sloan with a two-months-old baby boy, and a little note of farewell. La Petite Mabelle told him in melodramatic sentences, covering two sheets of note paper, that the attractions of the old life, with its cheap finery and grease paint, were too strong for her. She could never remain in Sioux City, where nobody called on her, Stewart himself seemed ashamed of her, and where there was nothing going on. She said further, that he mustn’t think too badly of her, and that he ought to try and forget her.

This Sloan had certainly tried hard enough to do. That fall he secured a divorce, and when the legislature convened in Des Moines next year, he had the name that La Petite Mabelle had disgraced changed to Richards, his mother’s maiden name. So young William Richards, as Sloan rechristened the boy, grew up to manhood, never knowing the tragedy of his father’s early life, and never having felt the softening influence of a mother’s love.

His father died when the lad was twelve, naming as his son’s guardian Colonel Wade, who looked after him as well as an old bachelor of fifty, loaded down with business cares, could be expected to look after a growing and spirited youth.

When Billy attained his majority, and had finished his college days, bluff old Colonel Wade took him aside as gently as a warm-hearted old man could do, told him the story of his first appearance on the stage of life, turned over to him a property more than sufficient for every reasonable need, and sent him out in the world which still called him The Boy, a nickname he had acquired in college. The Boy pondered over his early history for a few days, and then apparently forgot that any such unpleasant thing as history existed, concerning himself wholly with the present, which may be history, though at the time not recognized as such.

Lately The Boy had been drinking and doing some other things more than was good for him; but when the Colonel remonstrated in a fatherly way, he promised to “take a brace,” the same as he would have promised back in his college days, when he was under the discipline of the old professors. Stebbins’s remark, therefore, that The Boy was going to the devil, was rather a surprise to me, for I knew that he usually kept his word.

“Did any of you see the fairy that came in on the express this afternoon?” asked Perkins a little later, and as no one answered, he proceeded to explain:

“I went down to the three o’clock to meet Kitty, who came in from Denver to-day; and the first person who stepped off the train was the d----st looking female you ever saw. She must have been forty-five; but she had locks as golden as a maid of fifteen, and actually, I believe there was half a box of rouge on her cheeks. She had a little woolly dog in her arms, so covered with ribbons that I don’t believe it could walk alone. Kitty said she was flirting with the conductor all the way down from Butte, and some one on the train christened her ‘The Painted Lady.’”

“Where’s she stopping?” asked the Colonel, and I knew what was in his mind.

“She rode up town on the same ’bus with Kitty and me, and got out at the Algonquin,” answered Perkins. “You’d better look out for that protégé of yours, Colonel, he may be doing something rash. The Boy appears to be partial to blondes.”

The next day as I was coming down town I nearly upset a woman hurrying in the opposite direction. I picked up the parasol which I had knocked out of her hand, and as I glanced at her, I knew from Perkins’s description that she was The Painted Lady.

She probably wasn’t more than thirty-seven or thirty-eight, but there were deep lines about her eyes and the corners of the mouth which ought not to be in the face of a woman of sixty. Her hair, under the stimulating influence of peroxide, was a bright yellow, and her cheeks had on them the bloom usually found on buxom Irish lasses, or in small, round boxes in a drug store. At the end of a silver chain, and covered with ribbons, was a diminutive French poodle.

She was stylishly dressed, and her figure, though making me wonder at the time (and strength) taken to produce it, was still quite pleasing to look upon in the final result. Her name, as I found out at the club that evening, was Madame Mabel Fortesque, and one of the evening papers stated that she was a young widow taking a western trip for her health. She had a suite at the Algonquin, and spent most of her time driving about the city, for she had sent to Denver for a showy turnout, and it was not long before it became a common sight to see her riding about with some one of the young officers from Fort Blair beside her.

Dame Rumor, never inclined to be delicate in her handling of young widows who travel about the country without chaperons, of course had a fling at Madame Fortesque; and if only half the stories which were circulated about her were true, she must have found Preston City a lively place.

The day of her arrival The Boy had been called away to Chicago on business, so the Colonel and I were relieved of any immediate worry as to an acquaintance being established between him and The Painted Lady, as nearly everyone in Preston City quickly came to call the widow.

The Boy came back two weeks later, however, and our worst fears were then realized, for he immediately became as attentive to Madame Fortesque as any of the young subalterns from the fort. Most of the men at the club talked it over good-naturedly, and, man-fashion, considered it a good joke; but the wives of these same club men regarded it differently; it was even rumored that old Mrs. Burton, the worst gossip in the city, had written to a girl in Boston to whom The Boy was engaged.

“If she were only some young thing and good-looking,” groaned the Colonel, “it wouldn’t be so bad; but what he can find in that fudged-up old woman is more than I can see. Why, man, she is old enough to be his mother.”

He intended to speak to The Boy about it but never did, for he knew he could not talk to the young man when there was a woman in the case, the same as he could when it was merely a question of his gambling or drinking too much.

Things were going on badly enough, when one evening as I was seated in the reading-room at the Sherwood, looking over a paper, I heard Stebbins talking to a group in the next room.

“Yes, I’ve found out the whole history of The Painted Lady,” he was saying; “she’s all that Old Lady Burton says, and more. She’s been living down at the Rapids for a year or two; and I saw Jack Denvers when I was down there last week, and he gave me the whole story. She was a skirt-dancer among other things when she was young, and some way got her hooks onto a young fellow from Sioux City named Sloan. He came from a fine family, and his people were all broken up over the affair, for she proved a bad lot, I reckon. She ran away from him before they had been married a year, and has been going down the line ever since. Denvers says that if she stops up here the married women would better watch out. She’s the woman that was mixed up in the Stanley divorce case down at the Rapids last year; and they say she got--Hello! what’s the matter with Billy? Same old story?”

Alarmed, for I had not the slightest idea that The Boy was there, I turned and saw him staggering blindly from the room. He ran against a hat-tree, and some of the men laughed, but I saw his face, and I knew that it was not the drink that made him look so ghastly.

I hurried up to the card-room where the Colonel was playing his evening game of whist, and, whispering a word in his ear, I got him into an alcove and told him what had just taken place.

“Good God! this is horrible,” he muttered; “why, it’s his own mother, and he knows it.”

We hastened from the club, but there were no carriages in sight outside.

“The Boy just staggered out bareheaded, and drove off toward his hotel in the only cab here,” said Perkins, who was coming up the steps. “What’s the matter with him? I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. Stewed again?”

We did not stop to satisfy his curiosity, but walked rapidly up to the Algonquin.

“He went up-stairs about ten minutes ago,” the clerk told us in answer to our question, and grinned knowingly.

The door of his room was not locked, and after knocking several times without getting any reply, we went in, and found just what I had feared we should find, The Boy lying face downwards on the floor, one hand clasping a discharged revolver. I looked at the powder-stained cheek, and though I felt that it was absolutely hopeless, I left the Colonel kneeling by his side, and hurried out in search of a doctor. As I stood by the front door hesitating which way to go, a trap was driven up under the electric lights, and a beardless youth in lieutenant’s uniform helped a loudly-dressed woman to alight. They walked through the foyer, and entered the elevator laughing and talking, while a little yellow dog, covered with ribbons, capered and barked in front of them.

It was The Painted Lady--and another boy.

THE PALACE OF SIN.

THE PALACE OF SIN.

The following advertisement, even had it ever appeared in any of the great dailies, would probably have occasioned little comment or curiosity:--

Those who are weary of the laws and so-called “society restrictions”
of the present day can find an immediate and complete relief by
applying at once to JENIFER VASS, Lock Box 3265B.

Even in 1885, though the business had not then attained the gigantic proportions of the present day, the advertising genius was still at work; and any one chancing to read such a notice would no doubt have set it down as the bait thrown out by the vendor of some patent medicine, weight lift, or equally undesirable article.

The promoters of the scheme for the “Pursuance of Vice,” as they facetiously called it among themselves, realized this, and did not attempt to reach the public by any such open means. To make known their project they resorted to other methods which, though acting quietly and unnoticed, nevertheless produced sufficient effect, so that on the night of June 16, 1885, when the floating palace of Iniquity, “Lawless,” left one of the North-river piers, she had on board eight hundred souls. That is to say, there were eight hundred passengers; but, judging from the declared object with which the “Lawless” put to sea, it is more probable that the souls of those on board had been left behind.

This voyage of the “Lawless” was the result of much thought on the part of three individuals who, at one time or another, had figured prominently in the police courts of New York and Chicago. Jenifer Vass, in whose brain the plan had first found its inception, was at one time proprietor of the Red Inn, a feeble imitation of the Moulin Rouge of Paris; while Jackson Elbers and Louis Hopeman had both been mixed up in various enterprises, all of which tended to cater to the animal rather than the intellectual passions of their patrons.

Three miles from land, as you may not happen to know, is the limit of distance to which the law of the neighboring country applies. When beyond that point on the high seas no law on earth is valid save the orders of the ship’s captain. Knowing this fact, and from the knowledge of human nature gained in their various former pursuits, the three men mentioned had gotten together a few thousand dollars and purchased the Atlanta, once an ocean liner of the White Star line.

The Atlanta had been taken from the passenger service, being unable to compete with her faster rivals on the Cunard and Hamburg-Bremen lines; and it was planned to remodel and use her for a freight steamer.

Hearing of this, and as speed was no object in the excursions which the Palace of Sin was to make, Jenifer Vass and his two companions made an offer which was immediately accepted by the managers of the White Star line.

Then a work of transformation began. According to the scheme of Jenifer Vass, every vice which tempts men and women, every form of iniquity of the old and the new world, was to be introduced, cultivated, and pampered on board the “Lawless.” Ten staterooms were torn to pieces and made into one. The floors were covered with Turkish rugs; Bagdad curtains and Eastern ornaments were hung about the walls. The final appearance of the room was totally different from the little holes in the wall found in the Chinatown of nearly all the large cities, but its object was the same. Here men and women could smoke opium from morning till night, and with the additional advantage that no one would disturb them. There was no danger of the place being raided and their names appearing in the next morning’s police-court items. On one of the walls was arranged a set of bunks on which the sleepers could be laid away when the drug was really on.

One-half the ship was converted into a gambling hall. Here every game of chance at Monte Carlo,--faro, roulette, poker, pinquette, fantan, and every other game by which a man can win a fortune or lose his all in a single night--was to be put in operation.

There was to be a bar where every known strong drink could be bought, and each man was to be the judge of when he had had enough. No waiter could inform him that the management refused to serve him anything more, and he would have to go elsewhere. Here one could swill brandy, absinthe, bhang, or any other nerve-destroying drink until his brain reeled; and as long as he had the money to pay for more no one would stop him.

Every drug and narcotic, whose sale is guarded by the laws of the United States and other civilized countries, was to be sold as freely as the chocolates of the confectioner. Cocaine, opium, laudanum, and morphine were laid in in bulk for the use of the passengers of the “Lawless,” without limit or restriction. In fact, there was wine for the drinker, women for him who wanted company, song for him who would sing, and each and every other evil thing ever devised by a wicked and lustful world was to be found somewhere between the two decks of this Palace of Sin.

The trips were to last one month, the “Lawless” merely getting into mid ocean and steaming slowly down to the Gulf of Mexico, remaining there until the month was up, when the passengers, saturated with vice and steeped in corruption, were to be returned to the place of starting. The crew was cut down to as small a number as possible, and consisted mostly of the riffraff to be found about the wharves of any large seaport city.

There was nothing about the scheme which could be punished by the laws of any country, nevertheless the arrangements were kept as quiet as possible, and nothing found its way into the papers.

On the night of June 16, 1885, the “Lawless,” as the boat was very appropriately rechristened, steamed away from New York. The passengers had begun to arrive in the evening as soon as it became dark, and at 12.30 every one who had engaged passage was on board. There was no one down to the pier to speed the departing voyager, or to wish him good luck. The sinister expedition set out without as much as the wave of a handkerchief from shore. She was a little longer in getting under way than had been anticipated, but at two o’clock in the morning of the seventeenth, the “Lawless” was well out to sea, and the great hull, which up till then, save for a few lights about deck, had been kept dark, burst suddenly into light. Down in the hold a big Westinghouse generator was whirling away, and, at a word from the captain, fifteen hundred electric lights were suddenly switched into circuit and the “Lawless” was on full blast. The limit was reached, and the ship had come to her own.

There was one flaw, however, in the scheme of the Palace of Sin. That flaw was Pierre Planchette, first assistant engineer. Like most of the lower officers, he had been hired without knowing the object of the voyage, thinking that the “Lawless” was merely bound on a pleasure cruise in southern waters. He had just come from the Bellevue hospital, where he had been dangerously sick with brain fever, and he was still far from recovered, but hearing of the position and the high pay that went with it, he had left the hospital against the orders of the house physician. The man who had been originally hired for assistant having disappointed Jenifer Vass, the patient, with traces of the fever still upon him, was engaged on the very day of departure.

When, therefore, the three-mile limit was passed, and the hell up on deck broke out, Pierre Planchette turned to his chief for explanation of the sounds of revelry floating down below decks. “You don’t mean to say you don’t know the object of this ship?” asked the chief. “Why, the ‘Lawless’ is a floating hell. For the next thirty days every form of vice known to the civilized world will be going on up above there. There’s five hundred men and three hundred women in this gilded shell whose only object in life for one month will be to commit acts which on shore would be punished by fines and imprisonment.”

Without a word the assistant left the chief engineer, and seeking out the captain, demanded to be put on shore.

“You’ve signed with us for one month, and, by G--d, you’ll have to stay,” was all the answer he got from Jenifer Vass, to whom the captain sent him.

Then a strange thing happened. Into the disordered brain of the man, a short time before racked by fever, there came the thought that he had been chosen by God to be the instrument to punish the iniquity which had come to his knowledge.

He returned to the captain, and demanded a raise of fifteen dollars a month in his pay, claiming he did not know the kind of a job he was undertaking when he had signed. O, he was cunning, this fever stricken assistant engineer. He knew how to allay suspicion.

The raise of pay was granted, for Jenifer Vass did not like the look in the man’s eyes. Planchette went about his work, however, for the next few days quietly and apparently satisfied. And when by chance his duties took him up to where the painted women sang and gamed, and the drunken men made ribald jests, he only smiled strangely to himself and went on with his work. But he was busy all this time doing many things for which an assistant engineer is not usually paid to perform.

One evening he came to Vass, the man who was really in command of the “Lawless,” and asked to be shown about the ship. It was a strange request for an under officer to make to the owner of a ship, but Vass, as usual somewhat in his cups, and feeling particularly good-natured, for the money was coming in faster than he had dared to hope, consented.

Together they went into the gaming room, and the young engineer saw crowds of men and women standing about the whirling wheels, or sitting about the tables with the light of greed in their eyes. Here a woman laughed shrilly as the croupier pushed toward her a pile of money, while beside her a man cursed his luck in language which would have shamed a demon.

They went to the opium den and saw men and women, some safely tucked away on the little shelves, others sitting on low divans, while half a dozen grinning Chinamen cooked the little brown beads and brought to them. They went into other rooms, seeing sights which I will not describe, and everywhere suggestive songs and oaths met their ears.

That night about 12 o’clock a man slipped about the decks of the “Lawless,” making little noise but working busily. He went to the ship’s boats and removed from all save the one in the stern small sections of the bottom which had been cunningly sawed out. He went down in the hold to each of the pumps, and smiled to himself as he noted the cylinders from which the plungers had been removed. Then he drew a few more cans of oil and carried them down to where the coal was stored, and when he returned the cans were empty. From there he went to his cabin and carried a few more things to the one boat in the stern which had not been tampered with.

Then, although everything was completed, he paused irresolutely. He went to some of the rooms into which Jenifer Vass had taken him earlier in the evening. He did not go into them, but stood and listened to the sounds which came out through transoms and half-opened doors, and, as he listened, the former look of determination began to come back to his face.

He paused for a minute outside the drinking room, listening to the chorus of a vulgar song. The door opened and a couple of men staggering out started for the part of the ship given over to the women. As they lurched past him Planchette heard a remark one of them made to the other. He turned and walked swiftly to the hold, and lighting a match, held it over the spot on the coal where nearly a barrel of oil had soaked in. Then he stole back to the upper deck, slipped the ship’s boat carefully over the side and dropped into the sea.

He remained perfectly motionless, watching the great form of the “Lawless” as she steamed slowly past him. Taking up his oars he pulled along for a little way, and the distance between him and the ship did not increase greatly, for, as has been observed, speed of traveling was not one of the pleasures promised to the passengers of the “Lawless.” In a little while he saw a number of lights flash out on deck, and the black forms of many men hurrying to and fro were silhouetted against the sky. Then, suddenly, above the roar of the water he heard the piercing shriek of a woman. He shivered slightly and ceased rowing.

The ship’s engines had stopped, and the boat was rolling heavily on the swell. Great clouds of black smoke began to pour from the hatchways, and across the water he heard the sound of men trying to get out the boats, an undertaking followed immediately by an angry cursing in which he heard his own name mingled. But he only smiled again, that same strange smile that had been on his face for the last week when as he worked down in the bowels of the ship, he heard the sounds of riot above.

“They’ll be after the pumps now,” muttered the instrument of God to himself, and he laughed mirthlessly.

He took up his oars and began rowing again. He knew it was many miles to the nearest land, but he must get away from that great flaming eye, which seemed to be winking at him. The cries and shrieks of despair from those on board the burning ship were awful to hear, so he sang loudly and drowned out the noise.

He rowed furiously till nearly daybreak, when, sinking to the bottom of the boat, he slept from sheer exhaustion. When he opened his eyes again the sun was high in the heavens. He looked around him for some trace of his last night’s work, but only the great green expanse of water met his eye. There was not a speck on the waters. Of the eight hundred passengers who had set out a week before in pursuit of sin not one remained.

Five days later the BORUS, a merchantman plying between Savannah and New York, picked up a man off Hatteras, drifting about in a boat. He had neither oars nor provisions, and was raving with delirium. He was carried back to New York and taken to Bellevue hospital, where he was identified by the house physician as the man who had left there against orders two weeks before scarcely recovered from brain fever. He had a lucid interval three days later, during which the nurse learned much of the foregoing.

The man died that night muttering of a Palace of Sin which was smitten by the hand of God.

THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.

THE MAN WHO WAS NOT AFRAID.

Four young men sat around a table one winter’s night in an old New England country house. Their host, Richard Churchill, was a civil engineer, who had inherited some property, including this old estate, from an aunt; and he was giving a little winter stag party to three of his old college friends. On the table was a steaming punch bowl, and scattered about were pipes, tobacco and cigars. The conversation touched lightly on various subjects; the struggle in the Islands, the coming great presidential contest, and other current events. Captain Van Patten, a West Point graduate, who had done some things worthy of mention, and won the bars on his shoulder straps at San Juan Hill, had just made a statement regarding the courage of a recent great naval commander.