The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton

Mr. Middleton had never tried to sober a drunken man, but he had an indistinct recollection of hearing that a towel wet with cold water, wrapped around the head was the best remedial agent. As he soaked the towels, he could not but compare the difference between this chill restorative and the hot cakes in the tale of the emir, and on a sudden there came to him a thought that sent all the gloom from his face. He dropped the towels, he dropped the basin, and he opened the treatise of the hakim and feverishly refreshed his memory of the details of an operation sometimes practised in India.

An hour and a half had passed when Mr. Middleton finished. Mr. Augustus Brockelsby still sat in the revolving chair, but he was no longer disturbing the air with his unseemly grunts. He was, in fact, absolutely silent, absolutely still. The keenest touch could feel no pulsation in his wrist, the keenest eye could detect no agitation of his chest, the keenest ear could hear no beating from the region of the heart. For a moment as he gazed upon the result of following the instructions set down by the hakim, Mr. Middleton felt a little clutch of fear. But he was reassured by the lifelike appearance of the learned jurisconsult and by the fact that the induction into his present state had been attended by none of the manifestations that accompany death.

“Now,” said Mr. Middleton, addressing the unconscious form of Augustus Brockelsby, “now there will be no chance of you appearing in court in the case of Ralston versus Hippenmeyer. I will not restore you until it is all over. I will now have the long coveted opportunity to plead an important case and as I have studied it so carefully, I shall win. There will now be no chance that poor little Hippenmeyer will suffer from your disgraceful and bestial habits, for in spite of the best that could be done for you, you would be in no fit condition to plead a case this afternoon. And when I bring you to at fall of night, you will think you have been drunk all day. But where will I keep you in the meantime?”

This was a most perplexing problem. There were no closets in the suite of offices. There were no boxes, no desks big enough to conceal a man and Mr. Middleton’s brow was beginning to contract as he struggled with the problem, when suddenly the stillness of the room was disturbed by some one smiting the door. Not a sound made he, for his heart had stopped beating as completely as Brockelsby’s. What should he do, what should he do? The paralysis of fear answered for him and supplied the best present plan and he did nothing. Then came a voice, a voice calling him by name, the voice of Chauncy Stackelberg.

“Open up, old man, open up. I know you are there, for I heard you knocking around before I rapped and you dropped your handkerchief outside the door. Open up, or I’ll shin right over the transom, for I must see you,” and still preserving silence, Mr. Middleton heard a sound as of a man essaying to stand on the door knob and grasp the transom above. He rushed to the door, unlocked it, and opening it just enough to squeeze through, shut it behind him and thrust the key in the lock.

“Keep still, keep still. You’ll wake the old man. I can’t let you in.”

“Was that him, slumped down in the chair? Must be tired to sleep in that position. Say, old chap, you were my best man, and now I want you again.”

“Want me to draw up papers for a divorce?” said Mr. Middleton, gloomily. How was he going to get rid of this inopportune fellow?

“Shut up,” said Chauncy Stackelberg. “It’s a boy, and I want you to come up to the christening next Sunday and be godfather. You don’t know how happy I am. Say, come on down and get a drink.”

Ten minutes before, Mr. Middleton had been convinced that drink was a very great curse, but he accepted this invitation with alacrity, naming a saloon two blocks away as the one he considered best in that vicinity. He surmised that the happy father would hardly offer to come back with him from such a distance, and the surmise was correct. As he reascended to the office, with him in the elevator were two gentlemen, one of whom he recognized as Dr. Angus McAllyn, a celebrated surgeon who had two or three times come to the office to see Mr. Brockelsby and the other as Dr. Lucius Darst, a young eye and ear specialist who within the space of but a few days had established his office in the building. To neither of these gentlemen, however, was Mr. Middleton known.

“I want you to get off on this floor with me,” said Dr. McAllyn to his medical confrere. “I may want your assistance a bit. You see,” he went on, as they got out of the elevator and started down the corridor with Mr. Middleton just behind, “we had a banquet last night of the Society of Andrew Jackson’s Wars, and my friend Brockelsby got too much aboard. He was turned over to me to take to his home, but just as we were leaving, I received an urgent call. So the best I could do was to drive by here and start him toward his office and go on. He could navigate after a fashion and doubtless spent the night all right in his office, and I would take no farther trouble with him but for the fact that he has an important case to-day. So I want to fix him up, and as I haven’t much time, you can be of service to me.”

“Ah, ha,” said Mr. Middleton to himself, “I’ll just lie low until they have given up trying to get in and have gone.”

But they did not go away. To his consternation, they opened the door and walked in, for though he had put the key in the lock when he had closed the door behind him to parley with Chauncy Stackelberg, he had walked away without turning it! They would find Mr. Brockelsby! Great though Dr. McAllyn was, he would hardly be likely to recognize a condition of suspended animation. Unless Mr. Middleton confessed, there was danger that the famous forensic orator would be buried alive. And if he confessed, what would the consequences be to himself? The fact that in whatever event he would lose his place and be a marked and disgraced man, was the very least thing to consider. He was threatened with far more serious dangers than that. First, there would be the vengeance the law would take upon him for meddling with and tampering with medical matters. But even if he had been a physician, would the medical faculty look otherwise than with horror upon this rash and wanton experimenting with the strange and unholy practices of India? Even a medical man would be arrested for malpractice and for depriving a fellow being of the use of his faculties. The penitentiary stared him in the face.

He could not endure not to know what was taking place within. He must have knowledge of everything in order to know what moves to make and when to make them. He let himself through the outer door of Mr. Brockman’s private office, and by taking a position by the door communicating between this office and the main office, he could hear everything in safety.

“Shall I send for an undertaker?” asked Dr. Darst.

At these chilling words, Mr. Middleton was about to open the private office door and rush in and confess all. He had begun to place the key in the lock, when a joyful thought stayed his hand. Let them bury Mr. Brockelsby. He would dig him up. He laughed noiselessly in his intense relief. But hark, what does he hear?

“Darst, this is an unusual case.”

“Yes?” said Dr. Darst mildly.

“A strange, a remarkable case. Darst, if we do not examine this case, we are traitors to science. Darst, we must take him to the medical school. When we are through, we’ll sew him all again and bring him back here, or leave him almost any place where he can be found easily. He will be just as good to bury then as now, nobody hurt, and the cause of science advanced. Observe, Darst, dead, absolutely dead, yet with no rigor mortis. Dead, and yet as if he slept. If need be, we will pursue to the inmost recesses of his being the secret of his demise.”

Mr. Middleton was nigh to falling to the floor. The succession of hope and fear had taken from him all resolution. Of what use would it be to exhume Mr. Brockelsby after the doctors had cut him up? The impulse to rush in and confess had spent itself and he was now cravenly drifting with the tide. All judgment, all power of reflection had departed from him. He was now only a pitiable wretch with scarcely strength to stand by the door and listen, unable to originate any thought, any action.

“How are you going to get him out of here?” asked Dr. Darst.

“In a box. You don’t suppose I’d carry him down and put him in a hack?”

“But suppose they get to looking for him? It is known that he came here. A box goes out of here to be taken to the medical school, a long box that might hold a man. You and I are the ones who hire the men who carry the box.”

“Who said a long box that might hold a man? It will be a short, rather tall box, packing-case shape. Remember, he is as limber as you are and can be accommodated to any position. He will be put in it sitting bolt upright. It will be only half the length of a man, with nothing in its shape to suggest that it might hold a man. Who said take it to the medical school from here? I hire a drayman to take a box to the Union Depot. He dumps it there on the sidewalk near the places for in-going and out-going baggage. Ostensibly going to carry it as excess baggage. We fiddle around until he goes, then call up some other drayman in the crowd hanging about and take a box just arrived from Milwaukee, St. Paul, any place the drayman wants to think, out to the college. As for the inquiry that will be made concerning the whereabouts of Brockelsby, rest easy on that point. He frequently goes off on sprees of several days’ duration and his absence from home is of such common occurrence that his wife won’t begin to hunt him up until we are through with him and have got him back here, or have dumped him in front of some building with his neck broken, showing that he fell out of some story above.”

All this Mr. Middleton heard as he leaned against the door jamb, swallowing, swallowing, with never a thing in his mouth since the night before, yet swallowing. He heard Dr. Darst go after a box. He heard men deposit it in the corridor outside. He heard the two doctors take it in when the men had gone. He heard it go heavily out into the corridor again after a long interval. He heard more men come, come to carry it away, and he pulled himself together with a supreme effort and followed. He saw the box loaded on a dray. With his eye constantly on it, he threaded his way through the crowd on the sidewalk, followed it on its way across the river to the Union Depot. With never a hope in his heart that anything could possibly occur to save him from a final confession and its consequences, humanlike postponing the evil hour as long as he could.

The box was dumped upon the sidewalk before the depot. The two medical men stood leaning upon it, waiting for the drayman to depart. The evil moment had arrived. Once away from the depot, in the less congested streets in the direction of the medical college, the dray would go too fast for him to follow. He approached. He must speak now. No, no. He need not follow the dray. That was not necessary. He could get to the medical school before they could have time to do injury to Mr. Brockelsby. It would be safe to let the box get out of his sight for that little time. He would tell at the medical college.

“Yes, as soon as we get him there,” said Dr. McAllyn, “we’ll put him in the pickle.”

Mr. Middleton sprang forward and put an appealing hand upon the shoulder of either doctor. With a sudden start that caused him to start in turn, each wheeled about. For a moment, he could say nothing and stood with palsied lips while they gave back his stare. Gave back his stare? All at once his mouth came open and these were the words he heard issue forth:

“Sirs, I arrest you for stealing the body of Mr. Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby, attorney-at-law.”

He who had just now been an abject, grovelling wretch, was of a sudden come to be a lord among men. The practitioners making no reply, he continued:

“Are you going to be sensible enough to make no trouble, or shall I have to call yonder officer?”

Mr. Middleton considered this quite a master stroke. By the assumption of a pretended authority over the neighboring policeman he would forestall any possibility of resistance and question as to what authority he represented. But he need have had no fears on this score. The doctors were too alarmed to do otherwise than submit to his pleasure, too thoroughly convinced that none but a detective could have had knowledge of the contents of the box. But Dr. McAllyn did attach a significance to what Mr. Middleton had said, a significance natural to one so well acquainted with the devious ways of the great city as he was.

“Well,” he said, with a sardonic smile, “you needn’t call in help. We stand pat. How much is it going to cost us?”

Then did Mr. Middleton perceive he was delivered from a dilemma, a dilemma unforeseen, but which even if foreseen, he could not have forearmed against. After he had arrested the doctors, how would he have disposed of them and the box containing Mr. Brockelsby? How could he have released the doctors and carried off the box in a manner that would not excite their suspicions? If he had, in pretended leniency and soft-heartedness told them they were free, the absence of any apparent motive for this action would have instantly caused them to suspect that for some unknown and probably unrighteous reason, he desired possession of the body of Mr. Brockelsby and thus would ensue a series of complications that would make the ruse of the arrest but a leap from the frying pan into the fire. But now Dr. McAllyn had supplied the motive.

“Sirs,” said Mr. Middleton, with an air of virtue that was well suited to the character of the sentiments he now began to enunciate, “you deserve punishment. You have been taken in the act of committing a crime that is particularly revolting, – stealing a corpse. Dr. McAllyn, you have been apprehended in foul treason against friendship. You have stolen the body of a comrade. You have meditated cruel and shocking mutilation of this body, giving to the horror-stricken eyes of the frantic widow the mangled and defaced flesh that was once the goodly person of her husband, leaving her to waste her life in vain and terrible speculations as to where and how he encountered this awful death with its so dreadful wounds.”

“It was for the sake of science,” interpolated Dr. McAllyn, in no little indignation. “If from the insensible clay of the dead we may learn that which will save suffering and prolong existence for the living, well may we disregard the ancient and ridiculous sentiment regarding corpses, a relic of the ancient heathen days when it was believed that this selfsame body of this life was worn again in another world.”

“I will not engage in an antiquarian discussion with you, sir, as to the origin of this sentiment. Suffice to say it exists and is one of the most powerful sentiments that rules mankind. You have attempted to violate it, to outrage it. However you may look upon your action, the penitentiary awaits you. Yet one can well hesitate to pronounce the word that condemns a fellow man to that living death. It is not the mere punishment itself. The dragging years will pass, but what will you be when they have passed? We no longer brand the persons of convicts, but none the less does the iron sear their souls and none the less does the world see with its mind’s eye the scorched word ‘convict’ on their brows, so long as they live. In the capacity of judge, were I one, I might use such limit of discretion as the law allows in making your punishment lighter or heavier, but the disgrace of it, no one can mitigate. Therefore, that you may receive some measure of the punishment you deserve, and yet not be blasted for life, I will accept a monetary consideration and set you free.”

“Oh, you will, will you?” said Dr. McAllyn. “How much lighter or heavier will you in your capacity as judge make this impost?”

“I will not take my time in replying to your slurs in kind. You, Dr. McAllyn, as the one primarily responsible, as the leader who induced Dr. Darst to enter this conspiracy, as the one most to be reproached, in that Mr. Brockelsby was your friend, as the one by far the most able to pay, you shall pay $1,200. Dr. Darst shall pay $200. This is a punishment by no means commensurate with your crime. By this forfeit, shall you escape prison and disgrace.”

“Of course you know that I have no such sum as that about me,” said Dr. McAllyn. “I will write you a check.”

“I am not so green as I look,” said Mr. Middleton, assuming an easy sitting posture upon the box containing the mortal envelope of Mr. Brockelsby. “You may dispatch Dr. Darst with a check to get the money for you and himself. You will remain here as a hostage until his return.”

Accordingly, Dr. Darst departed and Mr. Middleton sat engrossed in reflection upon the chain of unpleasant circumstances that had forced upon him the unavoidable and distasteful rôle of a bribe-taker. Yet how else could he have carried off the part he had assumed? How else could he have obtained custody of Mr. Brockelsby? And surely the doctors richly deserved punishment. It was not meet that they should go scot free and in no other way could he bring it about that retribution should be visited upon them.

“It is all here,” said Mr. Middleton, when he had counted the bills brought by Dr. Darst. “I shall now see that Mr. Brockelsby is taken back to the office whence you took him.”

“Pardon me,” said Dr. Darst, “how in the world did you know we took him from his office? How did you ferret it all out?”

“I cannot tell you that,” said Mr. Middleton. “I shall take him back to the office. He will be found there later in the day, just as you found him. You are wise enough to make no inquiries concerning him, to watch for no news of developments. Indeed, to make in some measure an alibi, should it be needed, you had better leave town by next train for the rest of the day. If it were known you were with Mr. Brockelsby at any time, might it not be thought that you were responsible for the condition he was found in?”

The doctors boarded the very next train, and Mr. Middleton, serene in the knowledge that no one would disturb him now, had the box taken back and set up in the main office. A slight thump in the box as it was ended up against the wall, caused Mr. Middleton to believe that Mr. Brockelsby was now resting on his head, but he resolved to allow this unavoidable circumstance to occasion him no disquiet. Going to a large department store where a sale of portières was in progress, he purchased some portières and a number of other things. The portières he draped over the box, concealing its bare pine with shimmering cardinal velvet and turning it into the semblance of a cabinet. Lest any inquisitive hand tear it away, he placed six volumes of Chitty and a bust of Daniel Webster upon the top and tacked two photographs of Mr. Brockelsby upon the front. Confident that no one would disturb the receptacle containing his employer, he went into court and after a short but exceedingly spirited legal battle in which he displayed a forensic ability, a legal lore, and a polished eloquence which few of the older members of the Chicago bar could have equalled, he won a signal victory.

Although it was not his intention to set about restoring Mr. Brockelsby until an hour that would ensure him against likelihood of interruption, he returned to the office to see if by any untoward mischance anybody could have interfered with the box. To his surprise, he found Mrs. Brockelsby seated before that object of vertu with her eye straying abstractedly over the cardinal portières, the photographs of Mr. Brockelsby, the bust of Daniel Webster, and the volumes of Chitty.

“Oh, Mr. Middleton,” exclaimed the lady. “Mr. Brockelsby did not come home to-day and they tell me he wasn’t in court.”

“No, he was not in court,” said Mr. Middleton.

“Oh, where, oh, where can he be!” moaned Mrs. Brockelsby.

Mr. Middleton being of the opinion that this question was merely exclamatory, ejaculatory in its nature, of the kind orators employ to garnish and embellish their discourse and which all books of rhetoric state do not expect or require an answer, accordingly made no answer. He was, nevertheless, somewhat disturbed by the poor lady’s grief and wished that it were possible to restore her husband to her instantly.

“Oh, I have wanted to see him so, I have wanted him so! Oh, where can he be, Mr. Middleton! I must find him. I cannot endure it longer. I will offer a reward to anyone who will bring him home within twenty-four hours, to anyone who will find him. Oh, oh, oh, oh! I will give $200. I will give it to you, yourself, if you will find him. Write a notice to that effect and take it to the newspaper offices.”

This great distress on the part of the lady was all contrary to what Dr. McAllyn had said concerning her indifference to the absence of her spouse and caused Mr. Middleton to feel very much like a guilty wretch. As he wrote out the notices for the papers, he reiterated assurances that Mr. Brockelsby would turn up before morning, while the partner of the missing barrister continued her heartbroken wailing and the cause of it all was driven well-nigh wild.

“Oh, if you only knew!” she said, as Mr. Middleton was about to depart for the newspaper offices. “Day after to-morrow, I am going to Washington to attend a meeting of the Federation of Woman’s Clubs. That odious Mrs. LeBaron is going to spring a diamond necklace worth two thousand dollars more than mine. Augustus must come home in time to sign a check so I can put three thousand dollars more into mine.”

A great load soared from Mr. Middleton’s mind and blithe joy reigned there instead.

“Mrs. Brockelsby, I’ll leave no stone unturned. I’ll bring you your husband before breakfast,” and escorting the lady to her carriage and handing her in with the greatest deference and most courtly gallantry, he set forth for one of the more famous of the large restaurants which are household words among the elite of Chicago. Mr. Middleton had never passed its portals, but with fourteen hundred dollars in his pocket and two hundred more in sight, he felt he could afford to give himself a good meal and break the fast he had kept since the evening before, for in the crowded events of the day, he had found time to refresh himself with nothing more substantial than an apple and a bag of peanuts, or fruit of the Arachis hypogea.

As he sat down at a table in the glittering salle-à-manger, what was his great surprise and even greater delight, to see seated opposite, just slowly finishing his dessert – a small bowl of sherbet – habited in a perfectly-fitting frock coat with a red carnation in the lapel, the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having exchanged mutual expressions of pleasure at this unexpected encounter, Mr. Middleton, overjoyed and elated at the successes of the day, began to pour into the ears of the prince a relation of the events that had resulted from the gift of the treatise of the learned hakim of Madras, which is in India. He told everything from the beginning to the end.

“In the morning,” he said in conclusion, “I take Mr. Brockelsby home in a cab and get the two hundred dollars.”

“Alas, alas!” said Achmed mournfully, his great liquid brown eyes resting sorrowfully upon Mr. Middleton. “What a corrupting effect the haste to get rich has upon American youth. My friend, it cannot be that you intend to take the two hundred dollars?”

“But I find old Brock, don’t I?’

“That is precisely what you do not do. You know where he is. You put him there. How can you say you found him?”

“All right, I won’t do it,” said Mr. Middleton, abashed at Achmed’s reproof, a reproof his conscience told him was eminently deserved.

“I thank Allah,” said the prince, “that I am an Arab and not an American. The fortunes of my line, its glories, were not won in the vulgar pursuits of trade, in the chicanery of business, in the shady paths of speculation, in the questionable manipulation of stocks and bonds. It was not thus that the ancient houses of the nobility of Europe and the Orient built up their honorable fortunes. Never did the men of my house parley with their consciences, never did they strike a truce with their knightly instincts in order to gain gold. Ah, no, no,” mused the prince, looking pensively up at the gaily decorated ceiling as he reflected upon the glories of his line; “it was in the noble profession of arms, the illustrious practice of warfare that we won our honorable possessions. At the sacking of Medina, the third prince of our house gained a goodly treasure of gold and precious stones, and founded our fortune. In warfare with the Wahabees, we acquired countless herds and the territories for them to roam upon. By descents across the Red Sea into the realms of the Abyssinians, we took hundreds of slaves. From the Dey of Aden we acquired one hundred thousand sequins as the price of peace. In the sacking of the cities of Hedjaz and Yemen and even the dominions of Oman, did we gallantly gain in the perilous and honorable pursuit of war further store of treasure. Ah, those were brave days, those days of old, those knightly days of old! Faugh, I am out of tune with this vile commercial country and this vile commercial age.”