I have hesitated to tell this story because it involves confidential
relations between lawyer and client which are, of course, absolutely
sacred to all who love and honour their profession as I do--and there
are many such, thank God.
But I'm--well, I'm old enough to be sensitive about my age, and not old
enough to be proud of it. Almost all my companions are dead--Bateman and
his enemies have passed away, and I think there ought to be a Statute of
Limitations for the relief of old lawyers who must live on memories.
Then, too, if a man has had the lessons which a matter like this
teaches, I think his experiences belong to his profession.
But when I think of it again, there is little in what I have to tell
that will serve either as instruction or warning, because there never
was, and never will be, another case like Bateman's.
I am satisfied, however, that there is no impropriety in disclosing the
facts after all these years, and of this I trust my professional record
is sufficient guaranty.
At the time of which I write I was junior partner in the firm of
Paulding & Wainwright, and our offices were on Front Street, in the
heart of the shipping business.
Josiah Bateman had been a client of Mr. Paulding long before I was
admitted to a partnership. His Will had been in our safe for fifteen
years, but neither my partner nor I knew its terms, for the old man had
drawn it up himself. "He guessed he knew enough law to give away his
property," he told us as we witnessed the instrument.
Mr. Bateman ought to have known some law. Certainly he had expended
enough money in litigation to pay for a hundred legal educations. Indeed
his genius for disputes would have made him an ideal client save for one
fact--he seldom took the advice of his lawyers. It naturally followed
that his success in the Courts was by no means encouraging. Whenever he
won a suit he claimed all the credit, and if he lost, our responsibility
was voiced by the loser in a tone only a little more offensive than his
self-gratulation. People used to wonder how we got on with the man, but
we were accustomed to his vagaries, and despite his declamations he paid
handsomely and promptly for every service rendered.
As he grew older Mr. Bateman's tendency to litigate increased
tremendously and the Office Register coupled his name with every kind of
law suit from a dispossess proceeding to a knotty problem in the law of
nations.
Mr. Bateman had never married, and he never spoke of his relatives to
anyone. Down-town New York knew him as a clear-headed, obstinate,
hard-working, irascible merchant who had made a great deal of money. But
there information stopped. His fortune was variously estimated from a
million up to five millions--one guess being as good as another in the
absence of any known facts.
So when the news came that Josiah Bateman was dead I think everybody
connected with our firm, from the senior partner to the office boy, was
curious to learn how the old man had left his money.
The news of his death did not reach us until a week after he had been
buried. We were then advised by letter that he had been on a hunting
trip in the Adirondacks and had become ill and died when far away from
any town. The guides seem to have known nothing about him and he was
buried at the nearest cemetery. No papers or documents were found upon
the body, and it was not until a week after his funeral that a crumpled
piece of paper was discovered in his game bag. This proved to be one of
our letters to him and we were at once put in possession of the facts.
At the same time we were informed that the body had been exhumed and
positively identified by an old friend of our client. Mr. Paulding was
away from Town on his vacation when the news came and in his absence the
responsibility for proper action devolved upon me.
The letter announcing Mr. Bateman's death arrived in the morning mail,
but I was engaged in Court all day and it was nearly seven o'clock in
the evening before I returned to the office. Letters and papers had
accumulated on my desk during my absence, but I was too tired and hungry
to attack the work they suggested, so dismissing the clerks for the
night I sought out the nearest restaurant.
All thought of Bateman's affairs had been crowded out by the events of
the day, and it was not until I had finished my after-dinner cigar that
they were recalled to me by seeing Mr. Bateman's obituary printed in an
evening paper.
It was the usual "boneyard" article which had doubtless been set up in
the newspaper office years before. Any way, after reading three quarters
of a column I learned nothing about the man I did not already know, and
what I knew could have been condensed into a dozen lines. It set me
thinking, however, about our queer old client. Perhaps his Will
contained some directions for the disposition of his body which should
govern my immediate instructions to the people in the Adirondacks. His
end would have been lonely enough anywhere, but up there in the silent
mountains, away from the city's bustle and battle which he loved, death
must have seemed fearful to that lonesome old man. Late as it was I
determined to return to the office and look at Mr. Bateman's Will.
I always carried a key to the front door of our office building, for no
one slept on the premises and sometimes it was important to gain
admission after the closing hour.
The streets were absolutely deserted as I left the restaurant and my
footsteps echoed upon the flagstones.
Surely down-town New York is the most dismal spot in the world at
night--a veritable city of the dead. The silent, empty streets have an
atmosphere of utter gloom--the buildings dark and forbidding stand in
gruesome solemnity or huddle together in hideous attitudes of fear--the
deserted offices here and there show a shaded light in some rear room,
but the ghastly glow only intensifies the darkness, and over all is the
silence--the awful silence--of the night. It is not the restful quiet of
sleep--it is not the peaceful stillness of death--it is the horrid,
breathing, staring silence of the trance. It is the silence that makes
you stop and listen--hush and whisper, or gently motion with your finger
on your lips.
The feeling of all this was upon me as I turned toward my office. The
unaccustomed stillness filled me with absurd apprehension, and tricked
me into starting at every shadow. My footsteps echoed more and more
rapidly upon the sidewalk, and louder and louder until I found myself
actually running along deserted Front Street.
I had been in the offices at night before, but I stumbled and tripped
up the familiar stairway as though the steps and the very walls
themselves had changed positions in the darkness.
I lit a lamp in our front room, but the big black shadows transformed
the well-known surroundings so that nothing seemed the same.
The globe on the corner shelf took the shape of some great bird sitting
gorged and sombre on its ample perch--the document cases with their
white letterings suggested dark heads and shining rows of teeth, and the
green baize doors studded with brass-nails seemed like monster coffins
set on end, each staring silently through an oval eye of glass.
I carried the lamp into my private room, but the draught from the hall
blew it out, so I closed the door before lighting it again.
In those days my private room in the rear of our office suite was
connected with the main rooms by a short hall, from which it was
separated by a green baize and glass-panelled door. In this room was the
firm safe, a cavern-like affair built into and occupying the entire rear
wall. The interior was lined with sheet iron, and the huge doors of the
same material were opened and locked with a key weighing perhaps half a
pound.
Sitting down at my desk I touched the secret spring of the drawer
containing this key. I am not a nervous man, but I had been under more
or less tension all day, and the stillness of the streets and the ugly
suggestions of the dark shadows in the outer offices had had their
effect upon my nerves, making me start as the spring snapped and the
drawer shot out. Holding the lamp in my left hand close to the safe
directly behind my chair, I fitted the huge key into the keyhole, and
unfastened the lock. The bolts turned easily, and placing the lamp upon
the desk again I pulled at the handle of the safe door. For a moment it
resisted and then swung open with a sound like a sob, emitting a breath
of cold air that chilled me and set the flame of the lamp flaring above
the chimney. It was like the damp breath of some underground tomb.
Moreover, it seemed to circle around me, blowing upon my neck and making
the papers on my desk rustle and whisper. So strong was this impression
that I swung about in my chair and stared into the blackness at the
other end of the room, and even as I did so, one of the papers before
me was silently wafted off the desk. I watched it as it floated slowly
and noiselessly towards the doorway, and when at last it settled gently
on the floor, I felt the beads of perspiration trickling down my face.
For fully a minute I must have sat peering into the darkness as though
fascinated by the gigantic shadows on the walls.
Then I laughed nervously, mopped my forehead, turned again to the safe,
and hastily took from the inner compartment a bundle of wills. Bateman's
testament was the third in the bundle. It was sealed up in a plain
envelope and the endorsement was in his own handwriting.
"_Will of Josiah Bateman. Dated June 10, 1855._"
The papers had that musty smell peculiar to old documents, and to which
I was entirely accustomed, but that night the odor had a sickening
effect upon me. It seemed to dry up the very air and make it suffocating
with the horrible stench of decay. I stood up and stretched my neck to
get an upper stratum of air, but the whole room seemed tainted with the
foul cloying breath.
I sat down at the desk again and turned my back upon the lamp so that
the light would fall over my shoulder. With a shudder I picked up the
envelope, which seemed to reek with the unendurable odor, and as I did
so, noticed the window close beside me. Why had I not thought of that
before? I dropped the paper and rose to open the sash.
The darkness outside and the light within had turned the window pane
into a mirror reflecting the room behind me with perfect clearness. The
whole effect was fearfully weird, and for an instant it held me
spellbound. In the foreground was my own ghastly white face--the eyes
apparently gazing not into mine, but at something behind me. In the
background the lamp, the desk, the papers, and the brass-nailed green
baize door, jet black in the night light, stood out clearly.
As I stared into this reflected room, I noted a peculiar dark spot on
the oval glass panel of the door. Was it at this my mirrored eyes seemed
to look?
I knew I was in no fit condition to withstand the tricks of imagination,
so I turned, not without an effort, to ascertain what really caused this
strange reflection. But my imagination would have served my over-wrought
nerves better than the fact, for the dark spot was unquestionably
something pressed against the glass from outside the room. Steadily I
gazed at this object, and endeavored with all the power I possessed to
reason myself out of the nameless dread that had settled down upon me.
It could not be what it seemed.--Hair against the panel of that
coffin-like door was too full of horrible suggestions! It must be a mop
which had fallen against the glass.--Of course it must be that. A mop,
too, would account for those damp breath stains on the glass.
Thus I reasoned, never taking my eyes off that oval pane in the door.
But as I gazed my theory fell to pieces and my reasoning stopped. The
moist spots on the glass began to expand and contract, vanish and
reappear slowly and regularly as to some heavy breathing. Every
exhalation seemed to blow that fearful odor of death toward my nostrils!
After a few moments however I could no longer deceive myself, for my
eyes, accustomed to the light, made out too plainly for doubt a face
pressed close against the glass watching my every movement.
With that discovery my reason and coolness seemed to return instantly.
Without taking my eyes off the face framed in the door panel, I slid
open the drawer immediately beneath my hand, groped for, and at last
grasped, the revolver I always kept there.
At last the face withdrew from the glass, but so sure was I that no
illusion had deceived me that I waited without moving a muscle. At
length the handle turned and the door was pulled open slowly. As slowly
I turned the chamber of my revolver, touching each cartridge with my
finger. The door continued to swing cautiously, and with my elbow still
in the drawer I raised my forearm, covering the widening slit with the
muzzle of my weapon.
The door opened outward into the hall, and at first I could see nothing
of the person pulling it. Then suddenly a hand darted out and grasped
the inside knob, and at the same moment the figure of a man, his back
turned toward me, blocked the opening. Had I fired then I could not have
missed my aim, but the opportunity was so complete it seemed murderous.
The fellow paused in the doorway and seemed to listen or look for
something in the hall or rooms beyond.
I tried to speak, but my throat only responded with a dry click. When
at last I controlled my voice its utterance was a harsh whisper,
"Stop where you are, or I'll fire! Don't turn or move a muscle! I have
you covered with a revolver."
The figure in the doorway started convulsively, but made no other
motion, and for a moment everything was so still I could hear my watch
ticking. Then I heard the man say,
"Don't shoot, Mr. Wainwright. I'm going to face you."
My heart almost stopped beating as I recognised the voice, but the
horror of the situation did not burst upon me until Josiah Bateman
turned and stood before me under the glare of the flaring lamp.
For a moment neither of us spoke, but I noticed the haggard look of the
man, the unkempt condition of his grey hair, and his soiled and tattered
clothing.
There was no doubt that the living man stood before me, but everything
about him breathed a horrid suggestiveness. At last I motioned to a seat
and addressed him.
"What does this mean?"
The old man smiled wearily, but his voice was much the same as usual.
"I'm afraid I've given you a scare, without intending it, Mr.
Wainwright. I owe you an apology. But you were plucky, Sir, and I--well,
I took some risks too."
"What does all this mean?" I repeated, with some annoyance in my tone.
"It's hard to tell in a few words, Mr. Wainwright, but I haven't risen
from the dead. Yes, I see you looking at my clothes, but I haven't been
inside a grave, and no undertaker has handled me yet."
"Don't you think we've had enough of mysteries, Mr. Bateman?" I inquired
impatiently.
"Surely--surely," replied the old man, "but I want to give you time to
recover yourself and----"
"I have quite recovered, thank you."
"Everything but your temper, Mr. Wainwright, everything but your temper.
You need to have that in hand before giving me advice."
"You seek a strange hour for consultation, Mr. Bateman. Allow me to
suggest an appointment for to-morrow morning."
"No time like the present, Mr. Wainwright. I might say no time except
the present. But while we are talking of time we waste it."
Mr. Bateman's manner was usually abrupt, almost brusque, and his present
oily tone had a peculiar menace to my ears.
"I cannot listen very long to-night, Mr. Bateman, so I must ask you to
explain your business at once," I answered shortly.
"Certainly my dear Sir,--though you can have no business more important
than this.--Do you mind if I close the door? The draught is annoying and
makes your miserable lamp sputter continually."
I felt I would rather not have that door closed again, but could give no
reason, so I simply nodded.
Mr. Bateman rose and closed the door. He even slipped the bolt, but upon
this I made no comment. Then he resumed his seat, ran his hands through
his long hair once or twice, and fixing his eyes on my face began
speaking rapidly in an entirely different tone.
"This is no time for details. You see I am alive, therefore the report
of my death is false. It is no case of mistaken identity. I arranged it
all. An unknown man did die in the Adirondacks. No, I did not kill him.
It was a natural death for him--an opportunity for me. I merely
supplied the evidence for his identification. No need of asking how I
did it. Enough that it's done and done with practically no confederates.
The question now I suppose is--why?"