Doctor Vardaman viewed the departure of his guests with mingled
relief and chagrin; the evening had not ended quite according to his
expectations, and he could not decide whether the disaster was his
fault or theirs; perhaps on the whole, they were lucky the outcome was
no worse. The young men of this generation lacked the self-control or
the physical fibre of their sires, he told himself irritably; and then
a queer smile twitched his lips as he remembered his own father saying
the same thing. To every age its own faults, and also its own standards
of judging them. In his day people used to speak tolerantly enough of
a man who drank; it was held a contemptible, but hardly a disgraceful
weakness. Are we grown better, or only more prudent? We go to church
less, but we certainly bathe a deal oftener. The creed of keeping one's
health is no such poor creed, when all is said; a man will diet to save
his mortal body with twice the vigour and conviction than he will pray
to save his immortal soul--and who shall say that it is not right, or
at least expedient for him to do so? For after all the health of his
soul is his own affair, but the health of his body vitally concerns
the welfare of others. Thus the doctor, moralising a little far afield
from the events of the evening; and he shrewdly suspected that to the
rest of the young fellows, Ted's drunkenness was not so unforgivable
an offence in itself, except for the monstrous inconvenience of it.
"And I am afraid I _am_ responsible for that," he said with half a
sigh. "If I had married and brought up a family, I should have known
better how to manage the lads. Eh, Louise?" He uttered the last words
aloud with a pensive glance at his Labrador-stones, and started at the
eerie sound of his own voice raised in sentimental monologue beside
his empty hearth. "I'm getting maudlin myself, now!" he thought, and
went to close the hall door swaying and creaking dismally in a rush of
damp, chilly air. It was raining pitilessly; it had rained for nearly
two weeks. The doctor, standing in his doorway, beheld the arrowy slant
of water shining against the dark where the hall light irradiated it;
amongst the irregularities of his brick-paved walk small puddles showed
an unsteady glistening surface. The bushes in half-leaf on either
side drooped and shone. Farther away there was an incessant rumour
of wheels, and he was aware of the measured approach and passage of
carriage-lamps in pairs, directed toward the Pallinder gate. Doctor
Vardaman watched them absently for some time, while the swift wind
refreshed his house; then he remembered Teddy, whom he had refused to
leave alone, slammed the door and went upstairs.
The young man was sleeping heavily, spread out upon the doctor's staid
old four-post bed; not in years, if ever, had that respectable piece
of furniture witnessed such a spectacle, and the doctor had a quaint
fancy that it withdrew itself shudderingly from the contamination.
It had been his mother's, and a kind of feminine severity appeared
in its starched and ruffled valance, as of indignant petticoats. He
leaned over and scanned Teddy's face, holding his own chin in his hand,
with knotted brows; then he felt the sleeper's pulse, listened to his
thick breathing, shook his head with a perplexed look, and began
mechanically to gather up the clothes thrown here and there about the
room. He went back and surveyed the bed again. "Very strange," said
Doctor Vardaman. And again: "Very strange!"
He went downstairs, and, not without a sardonic grin, brought up a
pitcher of ice-water, and placed it in readiness on the little old
mahogany candle-stand at the sufferer's right hand. The dining-room
was a woeful picture as he re-entered it. In the middle of the table,
the pyramid of jellies and cream had partly dissolved and trickled
down to mix with a waste of crumbled cake, cigar-stumps and ashes,
nut-shells, soiled napkins, shattered china--the doctor sat down
amid the desolation, likening himself to Marius among the ruins of
Carthage. There was a dreary odour--an odour? A _stench_, Doctor
Vardaman vigorously characterised it--of stale wine, stale coffee,
stale tobacco. Fragments of cheese swam in pudding-sauce; spent
bottles cumbered the sideboard; the door was open into the kitchen,
affording a vista of plates piled in tottering heaps, pots and pans
crowded on the cold range, a bowl of dishwater crowned with scum in
the sink, half-eaten meats and vegetables stiffening grimly in lakes
of discoloured gravy. "Faugh!" said the doctor in strong distaste, and
closed the door on the depressing scene. He sat down in his place at
the head of the table. Huddesley would have a job of cleaning up this
squalid hole on the morrow, he thought, and wondered how the man was
getting on in his new sphere; smiled, too, as he reflected that the
dream of Huddesley's life was being fulfilled. He had wanted to be
a "hactor," and indeed he had some turn that way, poor creature! It
was strange to think how unequally the gifts of Fate are distributed:
now there was Huddesley, an honest man, not at all a dull man, who,
if he had been born in any class but the servant class, even in a
less respectable one, might have made more of himself! That inherited
attitude of servility was a greater bar to his advancement than dulness
or vice; in America it might have been different; we have no definite
classes, and no traditions of behaviour. But in England a man who
habitually says "sir," and drops his _h's_--here the old gentleman came
bolt upright in his chair, upon a sudden moving recollection. Huddesley
had not dropped a single _h_ nor added one on, since assuming Teddy's
character! During all the talk that had followed his proposal, and
when he had hurriedly recited for them a number of Teddy's speeches,
his accent had nowise differed from their own. The fact, noted in
some obscure corner of the doctor's brain, now in the silence of the
vacant room, obtruded itself with an unwelcome insistence. It was
a slight thing, yet of a curious significance; a person could not
thus at will abandon the habit of a lifetime. Say it were not such a
habit, what then? Why, then the dialect was put on, like a garment;
and for what reason? If that was the case, Huddesley was by far too
much of a "hactor" to be officiating in the doctor's kitchen. We
do not look for, nor somehow relish so much versatility in one of
Huddesley's degree. Doctor Vardaman's thoughts hardly proceeded in
so orderly a sequence as they have been here set down, but by vague
speculative turns and windings they reached the last conclusion. He
began uncomfortably to review the manner of his engaging Huddesley,
and was startled to realise how little he actually knew of the man,
how haphazard had been his methods of hiring servants. "I'll write
to that Lord Whatever-his-name-was to-morrow," he told himself--and
then had to smile a little at this access of belated caution. The
whole thing, of course, was capable of some very simple explanation,
he thought impatiently, unwilling to own himself baffled; there was
not necessarily a dark, bloody mystery about a person's speaking in
dialect one moment and in the queen's English the next. It might be
that Huddesley was the exiled black sheep of some decent, even gentle
family--well, perhaps, not a black sheep, but at least a brindled one,
not good enough for the station to which he had been born, too good for
that to which he had sunk; stranger things than that have happened.
He had told a perfectly straight story; even if it were an invention,
that, so long as the man behaved himself, was no concern of Doctor
Vardaman's. "And when he misbehaves," said the doctor inwardly, "why,
then, like Dogberry, I'll let him go, and thank God I am rid of a
knave! I don't believe he _is_ a knave, but certainly I've always had
an idea he was no ordinary man. Maybe I'd better have a talk with him
to-morrow."
Now that suspicion, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, a
kind of doubting curiosity, had been aroused in the doctor's mind,
it would not down; a dozen instances of slips or inconsistencies in
Huddesley's conduct thronged upon him. He sat a long while, frowning
in uncomfortable recollection; then got up at last, and halfway to
the mantelpiece to get a cigar, paused again in puzzled meditation
with his gaze on the floor. At his feet there lay the broken bits
of Teddy's final glass in a sticky morass of Mynheer Van der Cuyp's
wine, that calamitous beverage, seeped into the nap of the carpet.
Doctor Vardaman gathered up the largest pieces gingerly, and tried
to fit them together; that set of glasses had been his mother's when
she went to housekeeping. It was beyond mending, however, and he was
on the point of tossing the shards into a waste-basket, when a fresh
discovery restrained him. He sniffed at them, sniffed his fingers, got
down on all-fours and laboriously sniffed the stained carpet. He rose;
"Teddy didn't drink that glass," he said aloud. "He only drank the
first one Huddesley gave him. But he had been drinking all evening." He
smelled at some other glasses standing near the young man's place, but
apparently could make nothing of them. He went hesitatingly toward the
door of a little room opening upon the hall, and at the very threshold
wavered in indecision. "Oh, this is all foolishness," he said. "How
could Huddesley--what possible motive----?" He opened the door. It
was a dark, windowless place, little more than a closet, which the
doctor had put to all sorts of uses, experimenting with chemicals,
photographic plates, raising mushrooms, the hundred-and-one devices of
industrious idleness. Everything there was in a kind of handy masculine
disorder, and he often boasted that he could go there in the dark and
pick up whatever he wanted without a moment's hesitation. But now he
struck a match, and ran an anxious eye along the shelves; he breathed a
little freer when he discerned the bottle he sought in its accustomed
place with contents undisturbed; it was colourless stuff. "All fancy!
I'm getting as notional as an old woman," he said to himself, and was
turning away, when some second thought prompted him to reach the bottle
down from the shelf. His match had gone out; the doctor went into the
parlour, where all the gas-jets were burning wastefully high, and some
red tulips he had bought that afternoon to decorate his banquet flagged
miserably in the old French china vases. He deliberately removed the
cork, smelled it, hesitated, touched the bottle to his tongue. "Well,
I'll be----," he ejaculated, facing his own pale and perturbed image in
the old-fashioned gilt mantel-glass.
Doctor Vardaman did not finish saying what he would be, but with a
mechanical precision, poured the rest of the liquid into a vase of
tulips. "There wasn't enough there to hurt him," he said thoughtfully.
"I _thought_ he didn't seem like a plain drunk somehow. He'll be pretty
sick when he comes to, but he'd be that anyway." He sought a cigar,
and sat down by the fireless grate with his hands on his knees. "The
question is, what next?" said he. "What is the bottom of all this? And
what on earth ought I to do?"
The old gentleman smoked his cigar out with his queries unanswered, and
sat staring intently at the mantel-board, his mind travelling up and
down in a fog of doubt and futile conjecture. The mantel-board exactly
fitted the opening of the fireplace, and was covered with pale green
wall-paper, having an arabesque border in white and gold all around
the edges, and in the middle a design of a Watteau gentleman and lady
kissing beside a fountain at the foot of a flight of marble steps with
a temple in the background. Clouds, roses, swans, butterflies and
turtle-doves contributed to the scene, and on a ribbon scroll beneath
one read: "_Dolce far niente._" It was an interesting mantel-board and
at least fifty years old. The doctor stared so long and so hard that
presently he experienced no surprise at finding himself on his way to
morning-service at the temple with a bunch of tulips in one hand and
a bottle of Mynheer Van der Cuyp's wine labelled somewhat erratically
"CAUTION. POISON. _Antidote, very strong black coffee_," in the other.
He was obliged to take passage in a boat with old Mrs. Botlisch, and
when Huddesley came around to collect the fare, discovered to his
mild annoyance that he had omitted to put on his trousers--a lapse
from conventionality which nobody else noticed, however. There arose
a terrific storm of thunder mainly, and someone began to be very
seasick--and--and----
And then the doctor waked up, with a jerk and the well-known but
perfectly indefinable feeling of lateness in the air. He looked around
blinking. Certain dismal sounds from the bedroom overhead accounted for
one feature of his dream, and a fusillade of knocks on the front door
supplied the thunder. "Why, I believe I've been asleep!" said Doctor
Vardaman, slowly collecting his faculties. A pause, and then more
knocking; voices muttered together, feet went to and fro on his porch,
somebody fumbled for the bell-handle, struck a match and found it, and
directly the bell sent forth a shattering broadside of sound in the
waste and deserted kitchen. "I'm coming!" shouted the doctor, adding a
brief anathema under his breath, and went to the door. Outside the rain
had ceased, but a wet wind shook and tip-toed among the trees. There
was a ghostly twilight abroad; it was possible dimly to descry the
outlines of the landscape. Stationary before his gate the lamps of a
carriage burned dimly. It was dawn! The doctor repressed an exclamation
of surprise and turned to his visitors. There were three of them; one
was a policeman in a shining waterproof cape-coat; he was a head and
shoulders above the others, and stood back from them deferentially as
one in the presence of his superiors. Before a word was spoken Doctor
Vardaman observed confusedly that all three drew together, and closed
up in front of the opening door, and the policeman shortened his grasp
on the baton he carried.
"Somebody hurt?" inquired the doctor, following up the first idea
suggested by this apparition. He was met by a counter question.
"Doctor Vardaman?" said the foremost. The doctor looked at him. He was
a commonplace man in commonplace clothes, stoutly-built and active,
with rather hard features and quick black eyes. The other might have
been his twin, save for a certain youthfulness in his alert gaze; he
leaned against the door-post chewing the fag end of a dead cigar.
There was a vague hostility in the appearance of these people; in the
unbecoming light of early morning, everyone wore a haggard and unkempt
air, except the burly fresh-faced policeman in his trim wet-weather
gear.
"I am Doctor Vardaman," said the old gentleman. "Is anyone hurt or
sick?"
"No, it's all right, Doc., take it easy, nobody's needin' you," said
the first speaker. "Sorry to knock you up this time o' night, but it
couldn't be helped. If my train had 'a' got in on time, I'd 'a' been
here not much after supper; but we're just in, I come right up from the
deepo. I gotta hump myself, or I wouldn't 'a' thought o' disturbin'
you. Here's my card. Say, you got a man named Huddesley, ain't you?"
"Huddesley?" echoed the doctor, in helpless bewilderment. During the
above speech, which had been delivered in a brisk, authoritative, but
carefully lowered voice, the speaker had walked in without the ceremony
of waiting to be asked, and now stood in the middle of the hall,
apparently inventorying everything in it with a swift and practised
eye. His subordinates followed, the policeman halting at the door-mat
and respectfully wiping his shoes.
"Yes, Huddesley, had him about eight or ten weeks, ain't you? Little
dark, stocky fellow; talks like he was English; says he was butler to
the nobility over there--ain't that him? Is he in the house now?"
"I don't think so," said the doctor, at once disturbed and resentful.
"He had to go out this evening. If you will oblige me with your name,
sir, and the object of this visit----?"
"You got it there on the card," said the other. "Take your time, Doc.,
don't go off at half-cock. I know it's kinder sudden, and I'm sorry,
but I guess I'll have to pinch your man. Where is he? Where'd he go?
Don't you know whether he's in or not? Who's that upstairs?"
"That is a guest of mine who is ill," said the doctor with rising
irritation. "If you will please to explain, sir----"
"I gotta hump myself, or I wouldn't 'a' bothered you, Doc.," said the
man, civilly enough. "Soon's you've got the sleep outa your eyes, you
can just look at that card I give you. We ain't goin' to make _you_
any trouble, you know, any more'n we can help, that is. Where's his
room? Upstairs? To the back? Go up there and look, Judd. Here, you,
one-o'-the-finest, what's your name?"
"Clancy, sor," said the policeman, and put a finger to his helmet.
"Go 'round to the back, and keep your eye out. I'll stay here. Is there
any other outside-doors, Doc.?"
"No," said the doctor shortly. "Is--ah--is this your card, sir?"
"Keep your shirt on," said the other soothingly. "You're comin' along
by the slow freight, but you'll get there directly. Go easy, and when
you're through readin' let me know."
The doctor, diverting his astounded mind from the spectacle of a
strange man of uncouth appearance and no manners giving orders in his
house, and another strange man going upstairs seemingly to search it,
adjusted his glasses and bringing them to bear on the card which the
leader had thrust into his passive hand, read:
JOHN P. HOPPLE, Collector.
Mercantile and Commercial Protective Association.
D. B. stands for Dead Beats. B. D. stands for Bad Debts. We
collect Bad Debts from Dead Beats everywhere for everybody. We
can collect yours. We collect regardless of Lodge, Politics, or
Religion. Do business with us and we will both make money.
_Some people don't like us._
"Ain't nobody up there," said the ancient, returning from the
exploration of Doctor Vardaman's upper rooms. "Except the sick dude in
the front room. Say, maybe he ain't been on a bat, ain't he? Oh, no, I
guess not!"
"Do I understand that Huddesley has got himself in trouble owing
someone?" asked Doctor Vardaman, finding the situation somewhat
illuminated. "It appears to me, Mr.--er"--he glanced again at the
card--"Mr. Hopple, it appears to me that your methods of collecting are
unduly--shall I say vigorous? To rout people out at this hour--I've no
doubt the man would have paid you without all this to-do. What is the
amount, if I may----"
"Say, ain't you barking up the wrong tree?" interrupted the other,
eying him in perplexity. "Or--here--say, that's funny, I give you the
wrong card. Excuse _me_, Doc., my mistake. That's a man's business-card
I met in the smoker coming from N'Yawk. This is _me_. Just read that,
will you? It's all square, Doc., I've got a reference--and Judd here's
from your own p'lice headquarters anyhow."
Again the doctor applied himself to a card and found thereon the
following legend:
WILLIAM O. GRIMM.
Paterson Detective Bureau.
"We never sleep."
It was hardly reassuring, in spite of the last statement; but before
Doctor Vardaman had sufficiently collected himself to ask for further
enlightenment, the policeman appeared in the doorway.
"Why--er--say," he remarked, "there's a party in a hack outside here
wants to know the way to Colonel Pallinder's. I told him that there
big house standin' back with them big pillows up the front, ain't that
right?"
"That's the place," said the doctor, half-listening.
"An' why--er--say, he said he see by the papers they was a party at
Colonel Pallinder's to-night and do you guess they've gone to bed yet,
becos he's met a lot o' kerridges comin' away from this di-rection like
it was over, an' he'd like to get there, becos he's gotta hump, he
says."
"Blamed if that ain't Hopple!" exclaimed the detective, in admiring
wonder. "Well, don't that beat the Dutch!"
"They ain't but that one Pallinder in town, is there?" asked the
policeman. "He says if they's anybody up yet, he's going to hump right
along and ketch 'em."
"Somebody may not have gone to bed yet," said the doctor, sparing a
moment from his own muddled affairs to wonder what this late arrival,
and energy of pursuit might mean. "In fact it seems my man Huddesley
has not got back from there yet. Tell him to drive straight on and turn
to the right at the gate. Did you say you were looking for Huddesley,
Mr. Grimm? What for?"
"Why, for a number o' things, Doc., bustin' up a safe at the Farmers'
an' Traders' Bank o' Sharontown, Missouri, an' makin' a get-away with
the specie, thirty-two hundred dollars in coin an' greenbacks, for one
thing. That was in July, 1881. If he's the man I'm looking for, his
name's Tuttle, or Cohen, or Jimmy the Toff--he goes by all of 'em--and
he's wanted in Boston besides for a jewelry-shop job last year."
Doctor Vardaman gazed speechless. Mr. Grimm's words, delivered in a
dry, curt, and entirely unsensational manner, fairly rattled about
the old gentleman's ears like hail. He was conscious of anger, of
resentment, and in the same breath of a ghastly and growing conviction.
"Impossible!" he gasped; and then felt involuntarily for his
cuff-buttons. "Jewelry-shop job! You mean Huddesley's a thief!"
"Put it there," said the detective, nodding encouragingly.
"Good Lord! Why--I--I can't believe it. He's been in my house for over
two months, and I've never missed a thing!"
"I guess you didn't have nothing worth while," said Grimm, casting the
glance of a connoisseur about him. "He thought it was a good place to
hide, or else he was fixing to bring off some other job."
"That's what!" said Judd briefly.
"I--I--it don't seem as if it _could_ be! Don't you think there's some
mistake?"
"Not likely," said Judd, without emotion. "I spotted him that time I
come up here peddlin' collar-buttons--t'ain't more'n two weeks ago--an'
I'll bet anything he spotted me, too. He's pretty fly, that fellow."
Mr. Grimm produced a bundle of papers from the inside pocket of his
coat, fished out a bit of pasteboard and held it before the doctor's
eyes. "That him?" he queried.
Doctor Vardaman surveyed it a while in silence. "I'm afraid so," he
said at last, with a sigh. "This is clean-shaven, and Huddesley wears
mutton chop side-whiskers, but it's the same face, undoubtedly."
The detective nodded with a satisfied air, and returned the photograph
to its place. He repeated his former question. "Did you say he'd gone
out? Was it to this party to-night? How'd that happen?"
"The--the circumstances are a little peculiar," said the doctor.
"Won't you sit down, Mr. Grimm? The fact is the young gentlemen of the
party--it's an entertainment, private theatricals--were dining with me,
and one of them was taken sick----"
"The feller upstairs, hey?" interposed Mr. Judd, smiling slightly.
"Ahem--yes. Well, then, Huddesley, who knew his part, volunteered
to take his place in the play, you understand. It was a great
accommodation----"
"Hold on a minute. Didn't it strike you as kinder queer he should 'a'
been so well up in the stage-business? Fact is, he _has_ been an actor,
he's been pretty nearly everything, but you didn't know that of course.
But didn't you ever have any suspicions?"
"Well, I had always thought the man was rather--rather unusual--a
little above his station, perhaps. But _this_! It never occurred to me.
You may have heard that there was an attempt at robbing the Pallinder
residence this winter, and Huddesley was one of the first to discover
it, and rouse the----"
He paused, seeing the two detectives exchange a meaning glance. "Told
you so," said Judd. He got up, walked to the door, spat into the porch,
and returned to his seat. "I was _on_--not right off, but pretty soon,"
said he. "Go ahead, Doc., you say Huddesley took your friend's part in
the play----"
"I suppose he had seen these young men go through their parts a dozen
times. It didn't seem at all odd to us; it would be a long story to go
into all the details, but we--we found it most fortunate that he could
supply the sick man's place. I wish to say, Mr. Grimm, that I have no
cause, personally, to complain of Huddesley. His conduct since he has
been with me has been most exemplary, I have never observed anything
suspicious----"
The doctor came to a dead stand-still, for at that moment his discovery
of the evening flashed into his mind with inconvenient abruptness.
"You're a kind-hearted man, sir," said Grimm, with warmth, "to say what
you can for the fellow, but I've got his record. It's queer he ain't
back yet." He looked at his watch. "They keep it up pretty late, don't
they? It's after three." He got up briskly. "I guess we'd better leave
Clancy here, Judd, an' go on up to the house. Looks to me like that'd
ought to be our next move. All ready?" He stood a moment frowning over
some new thought. "This here party, Doc., I guess it was goin' to be
pretty swell, wasn't it? I mean ladies all diked out with diamond
earrings an' breast-pins, hey?"
Doctor Vardaman, gripping the arms of his chair hard, stared at the
detective transfixed. If the various revelations which had visited the
old gentleman during the last moment had assumed the concrete, tangible
form of so many successive clubbings, he could not have been more
stunned. And in the ensuing short silence, Teddy's voice could be heard
upstairs mournfully requesting more ice-water for God's sake.
"Got himself good and tanked, didn't he?" said the detective, grinning.
"Mr. Grimm," said the doctor, with difficulty, "I have reason to
believe that my young friend has been drugged. I think Huddesley found
something among some few medicines I keep--it was a preparation of
chloroform--and put it in his wine. I happened to examine the bottle,
and it had been filled up with water. And the young man's glass smelled
perceptibly of the stuff--I was at a loss to account for it--why
Huddesley should want to drug him, I mean, but I--I am beginning to
understand. And--wait a minute!" he interposed as both of the others
opened their mouths on a question. "In one of the plays which they were
to perform, there is a question of some diamonds being stolen--the plot
turns on that episode, in fact. Jewels were loaned for the young people
to use--very costly ones. I am told Mrs. Pallinder's necklace alone is
valued at----"
"Told you so!" shouted Judd, starting to his feet. Grimm quieted him
with a gesture. "Well?" he said.
"Teddy's part--the part Huddesley contrived to get himself substituted
in, was that of a butler who steals the diamonds----"
"_Well_, WELL?"
"Well, sir, he would have them on his person, in his possession, at his
mercy, for the last two acts, the better part of an hour----"
"_And he ain't back yet!_" screeched Mr. William O. Grimm. He made a
frantic gesture. "Have they got a telephone? Where's your telephone?"
"I have none," said the doctor, feeling as if he were confessing to
arson. "The nearest is the drug-store corner of----"
Mr. Grimm uttered an oath direct and brilliant as a lightning-stroke.
Then he commanded himself with an effort. "Judd!" he bawled, making for
the door, and even in headlong flight, discharged a shaft of melancholy
satire: "No telephone! Say, Doc., it's a good ways to Broadway, ain't
it?" said he, and waved a farewell. "So long! Many thanks! See you
later!" He flashed forth from the house, his retainer at his heels. The
doctor saw their tumultuous passage down the walk, saw them scramble,
clamber, struggle into the waiting hack, saw it hurl upon its way
with vociferations--and silence fell like a blow. There stood Doctor
Vardaman and the policeman staring at each other in the empty porch.
"That fellow can hump, can't he?" said Clancy admiringly. "You just
_gotta_ where he comes from. Tell you, New York's th' place!"