"His was a pretty wit indeed," assented Master Francis. "Enter!" he urged with a gesture of hospitality.
"Nay!" cried the other. "As I am a just man it is perilous to enter into a writer's castle where one without offense is often lashed with lyrics or—what is more fearful—pilloried in prose. And furthermore, this Hebe of all Hodges, I have heard, this Helen of Houndsditch, hath a stout broomstick hid behind her door for players," he added, making a pretense of looking about him warily as he followed his host up the stairs, Master Francis going first to light a candle with a flint and steel.
"Come in," he said as the flame flickered up, "and welcome to my chambers, though this poor farthing dip is little better than a glowworm that doth serve to make the darkness visible."
"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," returned the other, throwing himself into a seat.
"You are yourself a poet!" Master Francis cried, "for you temper the cold iron of rough speech with oil of metaphor."
"Nay," said the player, "I am no rimester, but like a scissors-grinder I sometimes put a keener edge on better men's inventions. Faith," he continued, looking about him with approval, "I knew not that our Kit was housed so well. This is a very bower in which to woo the Muse. Friend, had I your table and your chair, your inkwell and your wit, it would not take me long to be the owner of one hundred pounds."
"One hundred pounds?" gasped Master Francis. "Believe me, it is not from inkwells that such miraculous drafts are made." He waved his hand toward the scattered papers on the table. "Look," he said, "it hath taken me a year to make that much fair paper valueless."
"You waste your time," replied the player lightly. "Instead of learned discourses, treatises, and theses, in which our age will not believe and the next most certainly prove false, you should devise a mask, a mummery, a play to set the groundlings' munching mouths agape, and make the gentle ladies of the boxes mince and murmur to their cavaliers, 'Ah, me, 'tis such a sweet death! Oh, la! and 'twould be pure to be so undone!'"
"A play!" exclaimed the scholar in surprise. "That's a task for poets, not for men of learning."
"Say not so!" the other interposed. "For learning is but poetry turned prude. Coax her with kisses, cozen her with a sigh, give her a broidered girdle and a fan, and call me Cerberus if thy staid Minerva will not tread a merry measure to Orpheus's lute."
"An' should she play the wanton thus for me, how should advantage follow?" Master Francis asked with growing interest, as he leaned forward in the candle-light to catch the answer.
"'Tis simplicity itself," replied the player. "Look you, this new-built play-house of the Globe is shortly to be opened, and the town is at the very finger pricks of curiosity to behold its marvels. The players stand like greyhounds in their gyves, the counters wait the welcome buffets of the coin, and Burbage, madder than a hare in March, bounds doubling on his track hither and thither to find a play."
"Sure London hath as many playwrights as a cheese hath mites," commented Master Francis.
"True," the other answered, "but look you, here's a case when mite and wright agree not. For one is mad, and one hath lost his cunning, and one will spend in drink the money given him for ink, and Kit, the master of them all, is writing comedies for shades in Pluto's courtyard. In troth, there seems no better market for a hundred pounds than 'twere a huckster's hat of rotten cherries."
"An hundred pounds!" gasped Master Francis. "The sum doth spell for me ambition gratified."
"Ah, ha, my lean scholar!" cried the player. "Is not the matter worth considering?"
"Marry, it is," admitted Master Francis, "if one had but the fancy."
"Oh, as to that," returned the other, "I'll warrant when your blood ran hot from the full caldron of lip-scalding youth, thy fancy played you many a pretty mask, for young imagination dreams more dreams than waking age doth have the wit to write. These conjure up again, unbar your closet, unlock your treasure chest—" Here Master Francis gave a start, but the player went on heedlessly: "By my faith, yon rascal coffer well might be the grave wherein the best of thee lies buried."
He made a motion of the hand toward the box of the departed Christopher, and Master Francis's visage in the candle-light turned pale.
"What ails you, man?" the other inquired. "Have you a memory of that last tobacco pipe?"
"Sir," cried Master Francis, rising slowly to his feet, "is it the truth that a play can be sold for so much money?"
"In the Queen's coin," the other answered. "So that it be worth the playing, so it be such a play as Kit could have written."
Master Francis, taking up the candle, moved toward the chest.
"I'll take you at your word," he said. "Like one who creeps with shrouded lanthorn and with muffled spade to force the moldering hinges of the gate of Death, I'll bring you back a play."
He stooped, and lifting the lid seized the first manuscript that met his hand and waved it triumphantly at his companion sitting on the table.
"A play!" cried the other, catching at the roll. "Ah, then I guessed aright. 'Tis a dull writer, fitted best for slumber-wooing churchmen's homilies, who has not in his time chucked blushing Thalia under her fair chin.... What have we here?" he demanded, spreading the pages open before him. "A play, indeed! A comedy, i' faith! Gadslid, a tragedy! A miracle of masterpieces, a masterpiece of miracles! 'Twill be the talk of London town and in the ages yet to come, when stately playhouses shall stand where now the painted savage cleaves his enemy, your play shall win the coy and cautious coin of nations yet unborn, your fame—"
"Peace, peace!" protested Master Francis, with a smile that would have done credit to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, "you are like a paid praisemonger who bawls loudest to extol the book he has not read."
"'Tis my prophetic soul," returned the player merrily, and waving the scroll above his head he went on: "Hear ye, hear ye, good servants of the Queen, here's meat for your digestions, matter for your minds; here's wit and wisdom, prose and poetry, to make ye swear that brave Kit Marlowe walks the earth again.... Come, gossip, write your name upon the title sheet. You are too modest."
"My name I may not sell," said Master Francis, holding back.
"Unnatural parent!" roared the other. "Would you thus turn your offspring loose upon the world without parentage?"
"I'll not be father to a brat so ill-begotten," replied Master Francis.
"How shall I answer then to Burbage should he ask the writer?" demanded the player.
"As you may," returned Master Francis with a shrug. "An't please you, say it was yourself. I care not, so my name be not revealed."
"'Twill be a jest," the player cried, laughing, "a jest which, should the play find favor, may be at any time corrected."
And taking up a pen he dipped it in the ink-horn to write across the page:
The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
"A proper title, surely!" commented the scholar, looking across his shoulder. "Your name, friend Will, should lure the public eye more cunningly than that of Francis Bacon."
THE CARHART MYSTERY
THE CARHART MYSTERY
The conversation had grown reminiscent, as conversations will when old acquaintance stirs its coffee after dinner and the blue wreaths of good tobacco-smoke float ceilingward, like pleasant specters, in the subdued light of the shaded lamps.
Barton and I, in following back some winding paths of memory now well-nigh overgrown, were in danger of forgetting our good manners till Willoughby reminded us of his presence.
"I might as well embrace this opportunity for a nap," he said, stretching his long legs to the fire, and sinking back into one of Barton's most engaging armchairs. "Just wake me up when you fellows hit upon a subject I know something of. I happen to have been living in India during the time the thrilling tea-and-tennis episodes you recall so fondly were taking place, and, to tell the truth, they bore me."
Barton laughed.
"Oh, we have done with recollections, and now you shall have a chance to bore us with an Indian tale or so by way of recompense," he said, with the candor permissible only between men who know each other well. "Make clear to us the difference between a maharajah and a pongee pajama, and go ahead."
"At least, my stories do not deal with duels that ended in Delmonico's, and flirtations which fell flat," asserted Willoughby, blowing a cloud of fragrant incense into space. "I've no idea of wasting occult material on a brace of rank Philistines, but if I were so disposed——"
"Dear boy!" I put in, rather testily; for I dislike fatuous patronage even in fun. "Either Barton or I could relate to you an incident which occurred in this very room, within a yard of where you sit, remarkable enough to make your Kiplingest jungle-tale seem as tame as 'Mother Hubbard's Dog!'"
"Indeed!" he said, sinking still farther into his chair, with something very like a yawn; and Barton, as he arose and moved to the mantelpiece, cast a look of remonstrance toward me which I was careful not to recognize.
"Ah, here comes Nathan with fresh coffee," our host announced, clearly to change the subject, as the round-shouldered figure of his worthy valet appeared in the lamplight. "Pray let him fill your cups, and, if it is not strong enough, don't hesitate to tell him."
"It'th not the coffee gentlemen dethired when I wath young," commented Nathan, a trifle sadly, and with the amusing lisp which made him something of a character, albeit he was rather a dull man even for a valet.
"I never take a second cup," Willoughby declared, adding: "But, if it's all the same, I might be tempted by a sip of soda later, say in half an hour or so."
This struck me as an excellent suggestion, and Barton evidently thought the same.
"Bring soda in half an hour," he instructed the servant, "and mind you have it cold."
"It'th never any other way you've had your thoda a thingle night for fifteen yearth, thir," retorted Nathan, with quite sufficient truth, no doubt, to justify the protest; and as he shuffled from the room, "Jim" Barton's guests chuckled.
"I move we give the half-hour to your yarn," said Willoughby, crossing his legs. "That is, if it can be told in thirty minutes."
"It's not worth half that time if it were told at all," replied our host. "The story is not worth much at best, but to give old Joe here the chance to intimate a too-elaborate dinner."
My name is Joseph, by the way.
"Oh, if you will admit that explanation——" I began, to draw him on, for I was anxious Willoughby should understand that interesting things could happen elsewhere than in India.
"I don't admit it in the least!" cried Barton, interrupting. "I assure you, Willoughby, upon my word, as sure as I stand here, I had tasted nothing more potent than a glass or two of Burgundy that night."
"What night?" inquired Willoughby.
"The night young Carhart disappeared," I interposed impressively. "The night a fellow six feet high and heavier than any one of us vanished as completely from this room as a puff of smoke dissolves in air."
"I have seen a puff of smoke go flying through a window," Willoughby suggested, laughing, though his interest had evidently been aroused, for he glanced toward the bay of leaded glass which made one of the pleasantest features of Barton's cozy smoking-room.
"But no man ever went through this particular window," I replied, taking the burden of enlightenment upon myself, in spite of my host's very apparent disapproval. "This window looks out upon a neighbor's yard, and ever since the house was built it has been barred as heavily as you see it now."
I sprang up, and, when I had pressed a button which set a dozen electric bulbs aglow in the four corners of the room, drew the light curtains to one side.
"Examine for yourself!" I cried, much in the manner of a showman.
"I'll take your word for it the iron in that grille is genuine," said Willoughby, without rising. "And I will admit that no fasting Yogi could worm himself through interstices so small. But how about the door?"
"The door," I hastened to assure him, "was then just as you see it now, an opening three feet wide, and Barton himself stood before it in the hall, a single step beyond the threshold."
I should have gone on in my eagerness to call attention to the walls and ceiling and floor, all obviously free from secret openings, had not Barton interrupted.
Shifting uneasily on his feet before the mantelpiece, he said: "Our friend Joe has not explained that he knows nothing of the circumstances beyond what I have told him."
"But not in confidence," I protested.
"No," admitted Barton, "not in confidence." And to his other guest he said: "I have made no secret of this strange occurrence, Willoughby, and my reluctance to discuss it arises from a doubt that long familiarity with the circumstances has not made it impossible for me to give to each its proper weight. I am in constant fear of coming upon a weakness which I have overlooked in the chain, and yet it would be a relief to discover such a flaw. I should have called in an expert at once. I should have sought the counsel of detectives; and such would unquestionably have been my course had not those most interested dissuaded me, Young Carhart's father telegraphed me: 'Say nothing to authorities. Disappearance satisfactorily explained.' And, at the time, that was enough. It was not till some months later that I learned the family were theosophists, a sect to which nothing is so satisfactory as the inexplicable. I have, myself, no theory to advance. The man, my guest, was here one moment, and the next he had gone from a room where the only openings were a grilled window and a guarded door. His overcoat and hat are still in my possession; and, from all I have been able to learn, he has not been heard of since."
"I beg that you will not think it necessary to tell me more of the story if it distresses you," protested Willoughby, courteously; for Barton's face had grown grave, and I had begun to feel my introduction of the subject ill-timed. But our host was quick to reassure him with a gesture.
"On the contrary," he said, "you have but just returned from India, where, as I have heard, mysterious disappearances are not uncommon, and occult matters are better understood. Your opinion will be of the greatest service."
"In that case," Willoughby replied, becoming instantly, judicially alert, "let us begin at the beginning. Who was Carhart? How came he here? What was the manner of his going?"
"That's just the mystery," I interposed.
"Joe, please don't interrupt," said Barton, making an effort to collect his thoughts.
"Sit down, old man," Willoughby suggested. "We'll choke Joe if he speaks again. Now let us have the facts—I'm deeply interested. Do sit down."
Barton complied in so far as to perch himself upon the broad arm of a leather chair.
"I shan't be tragic," he began; "for, as I said, there may be—in fact, there must be—some purely natural explanation. Of course, you never met young Carhart; for he came here while you were away. He had but few acquaintances in New York; for, although he brought good letters from Boston, where his people lived, he had not chosen to present them. He was a most attractive sort—half-back at Harvard, stroke-oar and all the rest. Great fellow in the Hasty Pudding Club, and poet of his class, but just a trifle—shall I say—susceptible and—"
"Soft," I suggested.
"No," contradicted Barton; "though, to tell the truth, he never could resist a pretty face. That was his failing."
"Remarkable man!" Willoughby commented, with fervor.
"He was," assented Barton. "In that respect, at least. He carried it too far. He wanted to marry every good-looking girl he met. He would have been married a dozen times before he graduated, had not his friends interfered."
"Thank heaven for friends!" commented Willoughby, with still more fervor.
"Till at last," continued Barton, now sufficiently himself to punctuate his narrative with occasional whiffs of his cigar, "at last Carhart fell under the influence of a widow."
"A designing widow," I put in, to make the situation clearer.
"Attractive?" Willoughby inquired.
"Oh, decidedly."
"Encumbrances?"
"No," answered Barton. "Not exactly. There were rumors of a husband in the background somewhere, but he was not produced."
"A pretty widow is beyond the habeas corpus act," mused Willoughby.
"Quite so," Barton admitted. "But, at all events, there was nothing really known against the lady except a maiden aunt, and this objectionable relative was, by the way, quite as much opposed to the match as were Carhart's own people."
"And why were they opposed to it?"
"Oh, you see, with his proclivities for poetry and acting, they were afraid an unhappy marriage would drive him to the stage, and, naturally, they took every measure to prevent it."
Here Barton paused to light a fresh cigar, while we others sipped our coffee thoughtfully.
"And what were these preventive measures?" Willoughby inquired.
"Oh, the usual thing," said Barton. "Threats, badgering, advice and promises. All these failed to move him; he was determined to make her his wife, and, as a last resource, his father wrote to me, putting the matter in my hands without reserve. Our ancestors came over on the same boat, so it appeared."
"The Mayflower," I breathed, but that was scarcely necessary.
"Quite so," he admitted; "and that, of course, entailed a certain obligation."
"Of course," we both assented, and the narrative continued.
"An elopement had been planned, as we had every reason to believe, for a certain evening; and the elder Carhart kept the Boston wires hot all day with appeals to me to save his son."
"And did you?" Willoughby inquired.
"Yes," answered Barton, cautiously, "in a way."
"How?"
"I began by inviting him to dinner."
"And, of course, he did not accept?"
"Oh, yes, he did. He both accepted and arrived on time, and I must say I never saw a man confront a filet mignon bordelaise with more outward satisfaction; and, though we spoke upon indifferent topics, his spirits seemed exuberant beyond all bounds. But you may be sure I kept an eye upon his every movement. I was determined he should not escape. In an extremity, I was prepared to administer a harmless sleeping-potion in his coffee."
"Indeed!" said Willoughby, as he set down his cup, and ran an investigating and suspicious tongue along the edges of his lips.
"A drastic measure, I admit," continued Barton, "but one which I should have considered justifiable, could I have foreseen the miscarriage of my other plan. You know my eldest sister, Emily?"
We bowed, for it was a duty to know Emily.
"And you know her eldest daughter, Emeline?"
We bowed again; it was a pleasure to know Emeline.
"Well," went on Barton, "it so happened that they were to dine that evening in the neighborhood, and I arranged with them to drop in upon me in an offhand way soon after their dinner, which was a small, informal one. I was convinced, you see, that Carhart could not fail to fall desperately in love with Emeline, which would have simplified affairs at once."
Of course, we both assented—I through civility, but Willoughby, as I fancied, with a somewhat heightened color.
"I presume you did not take Miss Emeline into your confidence," he said, a trifle stiffly.
"No," answered Barton, "but I have often wished since that I had been more frank. It's just the sort of thing she's good at."
Willoughby tossed his excellent cigar, half smoked, into the grate, with what appeared unnecessary violence.
"You were saying that your plan fell through," he prompted.
"It did," rejoined the host. "It fell through completely, as you shall see. I kept my young friend at the table as long as possible, and Nathan—to his credit I will say it—was never more deliberate; but when Carhart had declined almonds and raisins rather pointedly for the third time, we rose from the table, as the clock struck ten, and came in here to smoke. The lights were low, as they were before our friend Joe tried to blind us."
"I beg your pardon!" I exclaimed, and, hastening to the button, I reduced the room again to semi-darkness.
"Ah, that's more like it," said Barton. "I much prefer the light subdued. Well, here we were—Carhart before the mantelpiece, where I stood just now, smoking composedly enough, and I between him and the door, listening for the sound of the bell which might at any moment announce the arrival of the ladies. I remember perfectly that we were discussing setter-dogs; and, as you may well believe, I was never so put to it for anecdotes in my life, when at last the welcome summons came."
"I thought you said your plan fell through," Willoughby interposed.
"It did," retorted Barton. "The bell, which echoed through the house, was not rung by Emily at all, but by a servant with a note from her to say that, being indisposed, my sister had decided to drive directly home. Emeline, she added, was going on to some infernal dance. I had given Carhart no intimation of my sister's coming, and, naturally, I did not reveal the contents of her note. In fact, I made the dim light an excuse for stepping into the brighter hall, and this enabled me to conceal from him my first chagrin. As I stood not two feet from the threshold, debating what my course should be, I observed that Nathan closed the front door upon the messenger; and presently he passed me, going to his pantry, as I thought. I must have remained standing there before the door nearly a minute, though it seemed much less, for, when I turned, Nathan was at my elbow again, holding in his hand a tray of cups.
"'You served the coffee not a minute ago, you idiot!' I said, betraying the irritation which I felt; and, furthermore, I will confess, the smell of coffee brought back to me most painfully the only plan which then remained.
"'I thought you might be ready for thum more,' persisted Nathan, with his most aggravating lisp. 'I did not know the gentleman had gone.'
"'Gone!' I exclaimed. 'You must be blind. The gentleman, Mr. Carhart, is in the smoking-room.'
"'I beg your pardon, thir; but he'th not,' retorted Nathan, moving from me as though to avoid a blow. 'The gentleman ain't in the thmoking-room.'
"'Fool!' I cried, and darted from him, but the next moment I had found his words too true. Carhart had vanished, disappeared, melted, as one might say, into the element of air."
"Strange!" I reflected, lowering my voice as an aid to Barton's climax.
"Strange enough!" cried Willoughby, less impressed than I had hoped. "And so your servant was the first to make the discovery?"
"Yes," answered Barton; "although I have never allowed him to know of my astonishment. I did my best to pass it off as a joke. I allowed him to believe that Carhart had taken leave of me before the stupid blunder of the second coffee."
"Athking your pardon, thir," came in injured, lisping accents from the gloom. "I never brought no thecond coffee that night, becauth the cat upthet the coffee-pot, nor did I thay, thir, that the gentleman had gone."
Barton, concealing his annoyance, sat regarding his domestic for a moment with assumed indifference.
"And pray, what did you say, then, when you stood there beside me at the door?" he demanded.
"Nothing at all, thir," answered Nathan. "I wathn't there. I went back to my pantry when I had let out the methenger, and there I thtayed until I heard you hammering on the wallth and floor with the fire-shovel."
"That will do, Nathan," returned Barton stiffly; and I perceived an odd expression on the face of Willoughby.
"Thoda, thir?" inquired Nathan of the other guest.
"Yes," was the answer. "And please fill it up."
We settled down into an awkward silence, while Nathan fidgetted with soda-water bottles, Barton fingering his cigar, I toying with a paper-weight, and Willoughby intent upon the fire.
"Carhart," he kept repeating, almost to himself. "Where have I heard that name before? Carhart!"
"Carhart?" said Barton inquiringly.
"Carhart!" repeated Willoughby, with still more abstraction. "Carhart!"
"Yes, Carhart!" I put in, by way of keeping up the train of thought.
"Carhart!" roared Barton, springing to his feet. "Can't anybody say anything but Carhart?"
"And what became of the widow?" Willoughby demanded meditatively.
"I never knew nor cared to know," replied our host.
"Pretty, I think you said," continued Willoughby. "And auburn-haired?"
"Yes, deuced pretty, deuced auburn-haired. What are you driving at?"
Willoughby held up a soothing hand. "Just let me think," he said. "I used to know a man once in Calcutta. An American from Boston; sold canned goods, calico and caramels at wholesale; had a pretty wife. Clever fellow, too; and great at giving imitations—could mimic anything. Used to do an old domestic with a lisp in a way that would make your sides ache. I wish I could recall that fellow's name. By Jove, it was—it was!—it was!——"
"Was what?" I asked.
"Why, 'Carhart'!"
Barton, before the fire, swayed on his feet unsteadily, and clutched the mantelpiece for support. Old Nathan shuffled to his side.
"Thoda, thir?" the servant asked.
"Yes," said the master absently. "If you please, one lump of sugar and a little cream."
THE MONSTROSITY
THE MONSTROSITY
Fifteen minutes after Mr. and Mrs. Lemuel Livermore, accompanied by their daughter Selma, had driven away from their comfortable West Side residence, for the purpose of attending an annual family gathering at the house of Mrs. Livermore's widowed mother, Mrs. Pease, on the opposite side of Central Park, the Livermore domestics were stirred by a more than usually imperative ring at the front door-bell. It was Christmas Eve, a season when mercantile delivery wagons may appear at any hour. Presents had been arriving all the afternoon, and the sight of a large van backed up against the curbstone occasioned no surprise.
"What are they bringing us now?" inquired Bates, the butler, who rarely condescended to open the door in the absence of the family, from his pantry.
"It looks to me something like a sofa," replied the smiling housemaid, who generally knew by instinct when the ringer was to be young and good-looking, "and the delivery gentlemen want to know where to put it."
"A sofa, is it?" exclaimed the butler, coming forward. "I'd like to know who has been silly enough to make a present of a sofa to a family who have already more household goods than they know what to do with. They'll be sending in a porcelain bath-tub next," he added with a grunt, as he unbolted the second half of the front door to make room for a cumbrous piece of furniture, just then ascending the steps apparently upon four lusty legs. "Here, you fellows, wipe your feet and put it in the parlor, and when the family comes home I bet somebody'll get a blessing."
The sofa was, in point of fact, a well-fed lounge, corpulent and plushy and be-flowered, and when, its wrappings removed, it occupied the center of the Livermore pink and white drawing-room, the Livermore bric-à-brac and bibelots and bijouterie appeared to turn a trifle pale and to shrink within themselves, as though a note of discord had distressed them.
"Lord!" said the housemaid frankly, as she regarded the latest unwelcome acquisition, "but it is a beast!"
"Sets the room off, don't it?" remarked the fattest and most optimistic of the furniture men, as he consulted a memorandum in his hat. "Come in handy, won't it, when the missus wants to snatch a nap in the afternoon?"
The butler and the housemaid exchanged a glance of tolerant pity, but such benighted ignorance of social use was beyond enlightenment.
"Best give it a good brush-up to bring out the colors," the optimist admonished, surveying his late burden admiringly.
"I wouldn't touch it with the tongs," declared the housemaid, and the butler prophesied, "It won't stop long to gather dust where it is when the missus sets eyes on it once."
"Well," moralized the other, with a comprehensive glance about the room, "it's certainly a fact that rich folks does come in for all the luck."
And so saying he withdrew, accompanied by his mate, and the bolts were shot behind them.
"Our dinner will be getting cold," observed the butler. "Go down, Mary Anne, and tell the cook I'm coming, and I'll bring down the decanters. That sherry's hardly fit to serve upstairs again."
The housemaid sniffed.
"Be careful, Mr. Bates," she cautioned him. "The old butler, Auguste, was discharged because he found so many bottles of champagne that were unfit to serve upstairs."
"Auguste," rejoined the butler, "was a French duffer. He ought to have known that even broad-minded gentlemen always count champagne."
"Shall we leave the lights all burning in the parlor?" asked the housemaid.
"Certainly," replied Bates; "it wouldn't do for the missus to stumble over that thing in the dark."
"Lord!" said the housemaid, with a parting glance across her shoulder. "Lord! but it is a beast."
"An out and out monstrosity," the butler agreed.
Time passed; the servants went their ways; the parlor gas purred soothingly; the bric-à-brac engaged in whispered consultation. Whatever happened, the monstrosity should be made to feel its isolation—and it did. It stood a thing apart from its environment; it seemed to sigh, and presently its plebeian breast began to heave as with emotion. A crack developed in its tufted side, a pair of eyes appeared within the crack. The gas purred on; sounds from the servants' hall below suggested that the sherry had begun to express itself in terms of merriment. The crack grew wider until the sofa opened like a fat and flowery trunk. The eyes became a head, the head a man, who sat upon the sofa's edge and looked about him.
"All zings is the same," he murmured to himself in broken English. "Nothing is changed except that ze arrangements are in less taste zan in my time. Ah, people do not know when zay have ze good fortune."
He sighed, and, rising, ventured one large foot, encased in a felt shoe, upon the rug. He stood and gazed about him lovingly, as one who contemplates inanimate things once dear. He moved with noiseless caution to the nearest door and disappeared. Presently he returned, bearing a salver laden with pieces of silver from the dining-room—an ice-pitcher, an epergne, some dishes; these he proceeded deftly to roll in flannel bags, depositing each with loving care in the interior of the Monstrosity. Another expedition resulted in an equally attractive lot of plate, to be bestowed as carefully. Next, stepping to the mantel-piece, he selected a modest pair of Dresden images from the assortment there displayed.
"These," he soliloquized, "are mine undoubtedly. I might have broken them a thousand times and did not, and, therefore, they are mine."
He laid the figures tenderly and almost with a sigh beside the silver and closed the heavy tufted lid upon them.
"I will go upstairs for ze last time," he mused, a trace of sadness on his Gallic features, "and behold if Madame is still as careless with her jewel-box as in old days. I will ascertain for myself if Monsieur still sticks his scarf-pins in ze pin-cushion.... Ah, but it is depressing to revisit once familiar scenes. It makes one shed ze tear."
The tall clock in the hall struck half-past eight.
Even as the clock struck the butler below was rising to propose a toast.
"'Here's to those that love us,'" it began, and went on: "'Here's to us that love those,'"—but as this was not the way it should have gone on, the butler paused and blinked in disapproval at the cook, who laughed.
"'Here's to those that love those that love those that love those,'" he persisted solemnly, and might have continued the hierarchy still further had not an electric summons from the front door interrupted him.
"Sakes!" cried the cook, "what can that be?"
"More presents," the housemaid suggested.
"Another monstrosity, I'll be bound," the butler chuckled, stumbling from the room. "Let'sh all go shee about it."
He climbed the stairs unsteadily, and made his way along the hall with noticeable digressions from an even course.
"'Here's to those that love us that love them,'" he caroled cheerily, and when, with fumbling fingers, he had thrown the front door open, his eyes, still blinking, failed to perceive for the moment that Mr. Livermore himself stood on the threshold, surrounded by some half a score of muffled figures.
"Bates," began Mr. Livermore, "I forgot my latch-key, and ..."
"Get away with you," cried cheerful Mr. Bates; "we've got all the monstrosities we want already. 'Here's to them that love them that we love' ..."
"Bates," said Mr. Livermore, "you're drunk."
"Shir," said Bates; "shir, I ashure you sherry was not fit to sherve upstairs."
"Bates," said Mr. Livermore, "you are very drunk."
"Shir," said Bates, "shir, I ashure you it's all owing to that monstrosity. Monstrosity not fit to sherve upstairs."
Meanwhile Mrs. Livermore had lost no time in pushing past her husband into the hall, followed by Selma, followed by her widowed mother, Mrs. Pease, and Mr. Bertram Pease, her brother, and Miss McCunn, to whom Mr. Pease was supposed to be attentive, and Cousin Laura Fanshaw, and the two Misses Mapes, and Mr. Sellars, and Doctor Van Cott, all old friends, and a young gentleman by the name of Mickleworth, whom nobody knew much about, except Selma, who, for reasons of her own, kept her knowledge to herself. He had been invited to the family party as a chum of Cousin Dick Busby's, and was to have come with Dick, but the latter gentleman, at the last moment having received a more promising invitation, had sent word that he was ill.
While Mr. Livermore drew Bates aside, the housemaid busied herself with the ladies' wraps.
"You're through dinner early, ma'am," she said to Mrs. Livermore.
"We haven't had any dinner, Mary Anne," replied her mistress. "Mother's range exploded, or something awful happened to the pipes just after we sat down, and everything was ruined. So we brought the entire party here in cabs. Tell cook she must give us some sort of a meal at once ... canned tomato soup to begin with, followed by cold canned tongue, and ..."
"The breakfast fishballs," suggested Mary Anne.
"Excellent!" exclaimed her mistress. "And after that we might have ..."
"Marmalade," suggested Mary Anne.
"And buckwheat cakes," Selma interrupted.
"Of course," her mother acquiesced, "that will have to do ... with lots of bread and butter.... And now," she added cheerfully, turning to her guests, "we'll all go into the drawing-room and guess conundrums till dinner is ready. How fortunate it was that we had had our oysters before the accident!"
"My dear," said Mr. Livermore in a whisper, "I fear that Bates is hopelessly intoxicated."
"Oh, Lemuel, what are we to do?" gasped the hostess, clutching the hat-rack for support.
They were alone together in the hall and face to face with a dilemma.
"I give it up," said Mr. Livermore.
"You can't," rejoined his wife. "You'll have to think of something."
"Perhaps," suggested the gentleman foolishly, "an angel might be induced to come down from heaven...."
But his words were truer than he thought; a figure which had been creeping unobserved down the stairs now stood before them.
"Auguste!" gasped Mrs. Livermore, with an almost superstitious start.
"Yes, Madame," replied her former servant, while his benignant smile brought reassurance; "it is I. I have taken ze liberty of dropping in to wish Madame a merry Christmas."
"Thank Heaven!" cried the Hostess, restraining her impulse to fall upon his neck. "Now you must stay and help us out of our difficulties. You know exactly where all the silver is."
"Perfectly," replied the man respectfully, "and it will give me great pleasure to once more serve Madame."
"Auguste," said Mr. Livermore, "let bygones be forgotten. Go quickly and set the table, and put on everything to make it look attractive."
"Pardon, Monsieur," Auguste protested, "might it not seem out of place to display too much silver at such a simple meal?"
"He is right," declared Mrs. Livermore, "Auguste is right. His taste was always perfect—even in champagne."
Further discussion was prevented for the time by Selma's appearance at the drawing-room door, convulsed with mirth. Close at her side stood Mr. Mickleworth, also laughing.
"Oh, mamma!" cried the daughter of the house, "will you come and see what somebody has sent us as a present? The ugliest thing conceivable, an absolute monstrosity."
But the Livermores were thankful for the sofa, and the diversion which it brought. As no one present could possibly have made such a choice, they felt at liberty to abuse it to their hearts' content, and they stood just then in dire need of something to abuse ... until the fishballs filled the atmosphere with welcome fragrance.
Later, after Auguste had compounded his celebrated punch, they said some most amusing things about the lounge.
"It would make a capital wedding gift," laughed Mr. Livermore, with a sly glance at Mr. Bertram Pease, and Miss McCunn declared that she would die single rather than begin married life in the society of the monstrosity.
As time went on the spirit of the joyous season filled the company, and Yule-tide pastimes were suggested.
"In my young days," said Mrs. Pease, growing distinctly sporty, "we used to play hide-and-seek all over the old homestead, and whoever found the person hiding was entitled to a kiss."
"Capital!" pronounced Doctor Van Cott, debating which of the Misses Mapes a prosperous practitioner would be most fortunate in finding.
"Let's play it now," cried Uncle Bertram, knowing quite well whom he himself should seek most diligently.
"Good!" put in Mr. Mickleworth, "I'll be It first. All go into the little smoking-room, and when I say 'Coo' come out and look for me." To Selma he added, in a whisper, "If you, while searching, should hum 'In the Gloaming' softly, may I scratch to let you know where I am?"
Miss Livermore blushed.
Now, of course, the game was all a joke, not to be taken seriously, and to make the situation funnier, Mr. Mickleworth, who, in his boarding-house commonly kept his evening clothes in a divan box, went direct to the monstrosity and climbed in, closing the lid upon himself. But, as it happened, Mr. Mickleworth's box was old-fashioned and unprovided with the latest patent catch, impregnable to those unacquainted with the combination. His position, therefore, in the lounge's dark interior must have been alarming for a moment, had he not discovered an ample breathing hole, concealed from outward observation by a fringe. Some bundles, hard and angular, occasioned but a trifling inconvenience at his feet.
"Coo!" cried Mr. Mickleworth through the hole, when he had allowed sufficient time to mystify his fellow players. But for a moment it seemed to him that the others had not been playing fair, for there were voices speaking close to him.
"Say, you're a slick one, Frenchy," somebody remarked in unfamiliar accents. "You'll have your picture in the Gallery yet."
"Zat is all right," a foreign voice replied, "I know my business."
Now others appeared to join in the conversation, and it became evident that the entire company had entered.
"Let me out!" cried Mr. Mickleworth, but in the general Babel no one heard, and presently Mrs. Livermore's silvery notes were audible above the rest.
"It was a very stupid mistake," she said. "You should have known such an ugly thing could not be for us. Please take it away at once, and another time be more careful about reading the address."
"I'm sorry, mum," retorted somebody, "but I do hope you won't go for to report us to the firm? We're just pore workingmen."
"You have probably been drinking," put in Mr. Livermore magnanimously, "and as it is Christmas we will overlook the error. Auguste, see that they do not scratch the wood-work."
"Hurrah!" cried Selma joyfully. "It's going. The Monstrosity is being taken away. I hope whoever gets it will appreciate its merits more than we did."
"Let me out! Let me out!" cried Mr. Mickleworth, but by this time all the guests were chattering louder than ever.
Doctor Van Cott and the two Misses Mapes joined hands and danced as King David did before the Ark. Mr. Bertram Pease at the piano began to play the first selection that occurred to him, which chanced to be the Wedding March. The others clapped their hands and cheered.
"Let me out!" cried Mr. Mickleworth for the last time from his prison, but an oily apron was now pressed tight against the hole, and he caught the whispered observation:
"Say, Frenchy, you must have chucked the cat in by mistake."
He felt himself raised, jolted, tipped; he felt the chill of cold night air as it found access through the crack. He realized that he was being thrust feet first into a van and driven rapidly, he knew not where.
"And now," said Mr. Sellars, "I think we had better look for Mr. Mickleworth."
"Let us begin in the butler's pantry," suggested Cousin Laura Fanshaw, not loud enough for anyone else to hear.
The Christmas party sought high and low; they penetrated to the upper floors, and not until Selma had sung "In the Gloaming" before every closet door did they give up the quest.
"It's most mysterious," asserted the host.
"It's worse," his wife corrected him; "it's most ill-bred."
"Oh, we must look again," cried Selma, now in real distress; "he may be lying somewhere faint and ill."
"Nonsense!" rejoined Mrs. Pease. "Leave him alone, and, my word for it, he will make his appearance in a little while looking silly enough. Lemuel, a glass of water, if you please."
While the good lady sank exhausted to a chair, her devoted son-in-law hastened to the dining-room to supply her want.
"The ice-pitcher is not there," he said, returning. "I'll ring."
"But the pitcher must be in its usual place on the sideboard with the other silver," his wife protested.
"But all the same, it isn't," he insisted. "There is nothing on the sideboard; not a thing. Come see for yourself."
This gave occasion for the playful aphorism concerning the inability of man to see beyond his nose, but presently a scream from Mrs. Livermore confirmed her husband's statement.
"My pitcher!" she cried piteously. "My silver dishes! My epergne! Where have they gone? Where is Auguste?"
"Auguste," said Mary Anne, who, scenting an excitement, now ran up the kitchen stairs, "has also gone. He drove off with the sofa in the van."
"With the sofa?"
"Yes, ma'am; sitting on it."
"Robbed!" cried Mr. Livermore, with a lightning flash of keen conviction, and the entire company repeated in a hollow chorus:
"Robbed!"
But Mr. Livermore's lightning, after the manner of such fluids, was not satisfied to score a single bull's-eye.
"It was a deep conspiracy," he went on, becoming clairvoyant, "and ten to one that Mickleworth young man was in the plot."
"You shall not say such horrid things of him, papa," cried Selma.
"A thief!" persisted Mr. Livermore, disregarding her. "A villain in disguise! I don't believe that this impostor was ever Cousin Dick's old chum."
"Oh, papa," Selma interrupted, trembling; "Dick himself introduced Mr. Mickleworth to me at Southampton last summer. I did not tell you about it till you could know him and see how nice he is."
"Nice?" gasped her mother. "Nice?"
"Yes, mamma," Selma cried, sobbing, but still undaunted; "awfully nice, and he can write the most respectful little notes."
"Notes?" screamed her mother. "Selma, you stand there and tell me you have corresponded with a burglar? Oh, that I should have lived to see this day!"
Miss McCunn, much disturbed, had retired to the smoking-room, where Mr. Bertram Pease did all he could to comfort her. Doctor Van Cott on the stairs had put an impartial arm about each of the Misses Mapes. Cousin Laura Fanshaw, behind a screen, wept copiously on Mr. Sellars's left lapel.
"In my young days," said Mrs. Pease, "we kept a closer watch on both our children and our silverware."
"Mother," cried Mrs. Livermore, "don't make things worse by being aggravating. Poor Selma is suffering enough."
"I am not suffering at all," protested Selma stoutly. "My faith in George remains unshaken."
"George!" ejaculated her mother. "Lemuel, do you hear?"
"I do," replied Mr. Livermore, "and I'll attend to George's case just as soon as I can get Mulberry Street on the telephone."
"Stop!" cried his wife; "we must avoid a scandal."
The doorbell, which had taken such an active part in this eventful evening, now rang again. A silence followed, while the form of Bates was seen to pass through the hall. Then, almost with his accustomed dignity, though somewhat pale and wet about the head, he reappeared.
"Mr. Mickleworth!" he announced.
"I knew it!" Selma cried, with jubilation.
And Mr. Mickleworth it was, in truth, though much disheveled as to dress. A streak of mud lay on his rumpled shirtfront, and his evening coat suggested active combat. From each shoulder hung a nosebag, such as teamsters use for feeding horses in the street, and each bag bulged with priceless silver heirlooms. Behind him came a stalwart minion of the law, bearing the family ice-pitcher on a massive salver.
"Ah, ha!" cried Mr. Livermore complacently. "So, ho! 'Caught with the goods on,' as you say officially. You have done well, officer, and this night's work shall not go unrewarded."
"It wasn't me," the policeman protested ungrammatically; "this here young feller did it all himself."
"That we already know," said Mrs. Livermore.
"Be quiet, my child, until we hear the story," put in Mrs. Pease, who usually objected to her daughter's methods.
And the policeman told his tale.
"This here young chap," he said, with generous fervor, "must be a regular Herculaneum. He burst the lock and stopped the van and knocked two of the robbers out of time. When I came up he had the Frenchman by the throat, a-rolling of him in the mud. All I had to do was to ring for the patrol, and help him bring the stuff right back to you for recognition."
"Ahem!" said Mr. Livermore. "Ahem! Ahem!"
"Papa," cried Selma, while tears of triumph made her eyes more bright, "aren't you going to shake hands with George?"
And thereupon Mr. Livermore cordially enough did shake hands with George.
"Papa," said Selma, "won't you tell George that his part in this night's work shall not go unrewarded?"
"Oh, tell him that yourself," cried old Mrs. Pease impatiently.
In the drawing-room Mr. Bertram Pease was playing the Wedding March.
THE PRIESTESS OF AMEN RA
THE PRIESTESS OF AMEN RA
In the cold light from the tall studio window Frank Morewood's face seemed almost haggard, and certainly the right hand which held the little square of photographic paper trembled perceptibly. His left hand still retained its glove, although he had been George Dunbarton's guest for fully half an hour; his hat was pushed back on his head, his cane beneath his arm, as though he had forgotten everything except the negative before his eyes.
"Dunbarton," he demanded, with an obvious effort at unconcern, "is this some silly trick you have been playing me?"
The other, openly impatient, shrugged his shoulders beneath the velvet painter's jacket, and took a step toward the Frisian cabinet upon which lay a box of cigarettes.
"A trick, indeed!" he repeated across the flaming match. "You must think I have very little on my mind!" Then, under the inspiring influence of the Melachrino, his just resentment of the charge expressed itself more vehemently. "You break in upon me like a wild man; you insist that I stop in my serious work to develop your wretched little film; you watch every step of the process with the most unflattering suspicion, and now, by Jove, you're not satisfied!"
"Dunbarton," Morewood calmly replied, holding the print above his head, "you cannot realize what this may mean to me; the thing is too strange, too weird."
Dunbarton blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling, thoughtfully. "These amateur snap-shots are usually a trifle weird," he admitted, "they seldom do the subject justice, especially in the eyes of ardent admiration. Better keep your treasure covered up, old man, if you don't want it to fade out altogether. It isn't fixed, you know; it's just a negative."
"It's the most positive thing that ever came into the world," his visitor asserted; "the truest, the most wonderful."
"And so have twenty other pretty faces been for you, my dear boy," the confidant urged. "Each wonder commonly endures about a month."
"This wonder has endured three thousand years and more," retorted Morewood, once more regarding the photograph with reverent awe.
"A case of re-incarnation, I suppose?" the other suggested lightly, with a glance at his neglected easel that might have been accepted as a hint. "You'll excuse me if I daub a little on the masterpiece while the light lasts?" he added. "Going; no? Well, I'm glad to have you stay. Trouble? Oh, none at all. Always happy to oblige a friend. Of course, if you mean to follow up photography you ought to learn how to do these little things for yourself. And, by the way, do get a decent camera instead of a Cheap Jack department store affair such as every Seeing New Yorker has slung across his shoulder. Get out of the light, please. Sit down, do! Take off your hat; have a cigarette; make yourself comfortable, confound you!"
"Thanks, old man," Morewood answered, "I won't smoke; and, as for work this afternoon, I mean to tell you something which shall put all other thoughts out of your head for a while. I mean to tell you presently of the most wonderful thing that ever happened in the world."
"Great Scott!" the artist groaned; "is it as bad as that? Please keep your stick a little farther from my canvas, if you don't mind."
"It's quite a long story," Morewood admitted, disposing of the cane.
"Most of yours are!" his friend interjected.
Already the shadows were beginning to invade the painter's spacious studio; lurking in the folds of Flemish tapestry and Oriental stuffs, and filling distant corners where the glint of steel and copper arms and arabesques suggested the twinkling eyes of impish and unearthly listeners. If there is a time for everything, the early twilight is the season for story-telling, and the painter felt far less reluctance than he feigned when he resigned himself to listen. Throwing himself upon a divan and clasping his hands about an elevated knee, he said, "Begin your yarn, old fellow, I'm all attention."
Morewood took off his hat, bestrode a chair, and rested both elbows on its back.
"Dunbarton," he remarked, by way of introduction, "I don't suppose you have ever so much as heard of the college of Amen Ra?"
"Never in my life!" the other admitted frankly. "Where under the sun may be the college of Amen Ra?"
"No longer anywhere beneath the sun," Morewood replied, "but it used to be in Thebes about sixteen hundred years before Christ, as nearly as I can remember."
"Quite near enough," Dunbarton assented amiably. "We will not let a century or so retard a narrative which is to comprehend three thousand years."
"Don't jump too quickly at conclusions!" protested Morewood. "The story as I know it goes no farther back than the early sixties, when a party of five friends from Philadelphia——"
"Quakers?" inquired the painter.
"I don't know!" replied the other, not without a touch of irritation. "Five acquaintances, men of cultivation and means, who in the course of travel ascended the Nile as far as the first cataract. At Luxor they rested for a week, with a view to visiting the site of the great city of Thebes, and especially its marvelous and mystic temple of Amen Ra, unequaled upon earth for the sublimity of its ruined magnificence——"
"For further particulars, see Baedeker!" Dunbarton muttered.
"Upon the night of their arrival," continued the narrator, unheeding the interruption, "a fête was given in their honor by the Consul, Mustapha Aga. It was in the middle of this festivity, and during a dance by the Gaivasi girls of Luxor, that a strange nomad from the desert made his appearance unexpectedly. The Sheik Ben Ali, he was called, and his errand was to inform Mustapha Aga of the discovery, near a certain oasis, of an object of unusual interest, nothing less than a mummy case of surpassing beauty which had once held the body of a high priestess of Amen Ra."
"Hold on!" Dunbarton interrupted, relinquishing his grasp upon his knee. "Your local color is so intense that I feel myself in danger of becoming interested."
"Just wait until I get a little farther," answered Morewood, with a touch of triumph; "I only wish you could hear the story as it was told to me."
"By whom, if one might ask?" inquired Dunbarton, and his friend replied impressively:
"By a venerable man whom I met by the merest chance late one afternoon in the Egyptian room of the Metropolitan Museum—a strange old man, poorly dressed, but who had evidently seen better days, for he had traveled much in the East and knew the country well."
"I recognize the type," Dunbarton commented, "and make no doubt your learned friend was in the end prevailed upon to accept a trifling loan——"
"That has nothing to do with the story," Morewood retorted. "How far had I got?"
"You were in Luxor, at the last reports," the other prompted, "attending an informal little dance of Gaivasi ladies."
"Yes, yes," cried Morewood, taking up his thread again. "It was, indeed, a scene to captivate the traveler's fancy."
"Never mind the scene!"
"I don't intend to. Escorted by Mustapha Aga and his guard, they left the revels and followed the mysterious sheik out into the desert to a grove of palm-trees, where, bathed in the Egyptian moonlight, lay the marvelous mummy-case."
"What had become of the mummy?" asked Dunbarton.
"Hush!" Morewood whispered reverently. "Hear the story. The case, though decorated throughout with a surpassing skill, was most remarkable for the extreme beauty of the woman's face portrayed upon its upper end, in colors which had defied the ravages of time."
"I know the kind!" the painter put in. "Flat nose, wide mouth, two staring eyes, that might be either rights or lefts."
"The art of that period was, as we know, conventional," returned Morewood, "and it was that very fact which made this particular painting so remarkable, for it was realistic, vivid; it conveyed, indeed, a distinct impression of personality."
"Oh, amazing!" Dunbarton murmured.
"The most amazing thing in the world, as you yourself will presently admit," continued the story-teller. "You may believe the travelers were overjoyed to be the first outsiders to whom the treasure had been shown. They were not only men of talent and cultivation, but each was abundantly able to pay the very moderate price demanded by the sheik, and they lost no time in closing the bargain. To avoid contention, they drew lots among themselves for the privilege of becoming the owner of the mummy-case."
Here the narrator made an effective pause, and Dunbarton took the opportunity to light another cigarette.
"At first," pursued Morewood, "good fortune seemed to favor the eldest of the party, who was designated to me simply as Mr. X., though I strongly suspect him to have been no other than my old acquaintance of the Museum. But he had a generous disposition, and, touched by the keen disappointment of another member of the party, he relinquished his rights in favor of the second highest number, after an ownership of barely thirty seconds. Mr. P. forthwith became the sole possessor of the coveted object. I need not now recount the circumstances which led in the course of a few months to the transfer of the property to each in turn of the remaining members of the company, Mr. G. and Mr. Q. But here begins the mystery."
Another dramatic pause and the speaker's voice deepened.
"Within the year, P. lost his life by the explosion of a fowling piece without visible cause; G. disappeared while bathing in the Nile in the vicinity of a crocodile pool, and Q., after a period of captivity among hostile Arabs, died of a snake bite. Mr. X. alone survived, and arrived in Cairo broken in health, only to learn that the greater part of his fortune had been lost through the knavery of an agent. Truly, the priestess of Amen Ra had signified her displeasure in a most convincing manner."
"Who the deuce was she?" demanded Dunbarton.
"Why, the mummy, as I should have told you."
"But you didn't," remarked the painter. "And why do you suppose she was displeased?"
"Because," the other replied, with conviction, "she had been accustomed in life to veneration, worship, love, and naturally she did not like to have her coffin knocked about from place to place."
"I see," Dunbarton admitted gravely, but with the suspicion of a yawn suppressed. "What became of the coffin?"
"It had been shipped meanwhile to Germantown as a gift to the aunt of the last owner, a lady of so far unblemished reputation, who almost immediately acquired the cocaine habit."
"What? Cocaine in the sixties?" cried the painter captiously.
"Perhaps it may have been opium," Morewood admitted. "At all events she took to something pernicious, lost everything she had, and finally sold the precious relic to a Mrs. Meiswinkle, of Tuckahoe, who gave it a conspicuous place in her baronial hall."