The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Read online

  The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro

  (Originally published as “The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro”)

  BY

  HARRY STEPHEN KEELER

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER. I MR. MIDDLETON OF MELBOURNE

  CHAPTER. II “TO MY SON”

  CHAPTER. III THE GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS

  CHAPTER. IV THE GOLDEN-HAIRED GIRL

  CHAPTER. V THE MISSING YEAR

  CHAPTER. VI A PURSE OF TEN THOUSAND

  CHAPTER. VII THE LIGHTED WINDOW

  CHAPTER. VIII A FREE RIDE

  CHAPTER. IX UNDER THE SCEPTRE OF KINGS KELLY

  CHAPTER. X “MY BOY ANGELO”

  CHAPTER. XI “NOTHING TO SAY”

  CHAPTER. XII HERDED WEST

  CHAPTER. XIII STONECIPHER THE IMMOBILE

  CHAPTER. XIV “I’LL PROVE MY CASE

  CHAPTER. XV RE JONATHAN DOE

  CHAPTER. XVI A RAY OF LIGHT

  CHAPTER. XVII THE LAND OF FANTASY

  CHAPTER. XVIII POEMS

  CHAPTER. XIX THE TRUST COMPANY REPLIES

  CHAPTER. XX RAVEN LOCKS AND BROWN EYES

  CHAPTER. XXI THE PRECIOUS TOOL

  CHAPTER. XXII HERR DOCTOR VON ZERO

  CHAPTER. XXIII THE MIND SEARCHER

  CHAPTER. XXIV A ‘BO AND A GAYCAT

  CHAPTER. XXV MR. FORTESCUE’S ‘PHONE RINGS

  CHAPTER. XXVI KENBURYPORT 228

  CHAPTER. XXVII TWO MEN IN A CAR

  CHAPTER. XXVIII THE BLACKMAIL LADY

  CHAPTER. XXIX CLAD IN CANVAS

  CHAPTER. XXX CONCERNING ONE FORTESCUE

  CHAPTER. XXXI THE SPECTACLES OF MR. CAGLIOSTRO

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  CHAPTER I

  MR MIDDLETON OF MELBOURNE.

  JERRY MIDDLETON, late of Melbourne, Australia, seated on the observation platform of the San Francisco–Chicago Limited, gazed with never flagging interest at the continually changing panorama of American countryside that flashed past the roaring train. He smiled as he realised the strange paradox he presented, gawking at every farmer, at every pigsty, at every child who waved at the flashing train. For, though he had been born in America, of an American father, and though once before in his life he had travelled clear across the American continent, he had never, until he had dismounted from the Australian liner at San Francisco three days before, seen so much as even a blade of grass belonging to Uncle Sam’s domain.

  The train was perhaps yet an hour out from Chicago when he first glimpsed the words which emphasised once more that the key to success in America consisted of thundering forth one’s story from every factory-side and signboard. And that glimpse caused him to sit up with a decided shock, for, for the first time in his life, he saw his own family name emblazoned forth in gigantic letters — the very heart of an American advertisement.

  The train had slowed down to a crawl to pass over a bridge. And there this advertisement was, perhaps one hundred and fifty yards across the fields, its huge letters of snow-white on a background of jet-black, the whole occupying the entire side of a gigantic factory building, literally screaming forth its message for the travelling public to read.

  MAKES YOU VIEW LIFE THROUGH GLORIOUS COLOURS

  GIVES TONE TO YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM

  IS NOT COMPOUNDED MYSTERIOUSLY

  MAKES YOU SING A SONG INSTEAD OF MOPE

  MADE OF HEALTHFUL HERBS — NOT DRUGS

  DIGBY MIDDLETON’S OFFERING SUPREME

  THE AMAZING TONIC

  ON SALE AT ALL GOOD CHICAGO DRUG STORES FROM

  THE LAKE TO OAK PARK. HAVE YOUR DRUGGIST

  WRAP YOU UP A BOTILE.

  He read its every word as the train crawled slowly out on the trestle and commenced to pick up its speed.

  Lotsapep! And he was to be the owner of Lotsapep. What would it be like to be rich, comfortable, lionised in a land where wealth counts for all, yet a land which was strange to him, its people and its customs unknown — but withal his own land, his own country?

  And musing seriously on the train of thoughts led by this meaningless word — Lotsapep, he saw the great factories which always cluster on the outskirts of a big city become more and more frequent, more and more massed into groups. Signboards announcing Chicago hostelries flashed by in myriad colours. Backyards and viaducts now began to weld together factories and chimneys into a metropolitan whole. And of a sudden, almost before he realised it, the train ground into a great darkened train shed and Jerry Middleton was in the Land of Heart’s Desire.

  He threaded his way out of the train, and thence into the waiting-room. There he stood undecidedly, ill-at-ease for the first time, travelling-bag in one hand, walking-stick in the other. But here he glimpsed Fortescue.

  It had been four years since he had seen Luther Fortescue, his father’s secretary, and that meeting had been in Melbourne. Two years prior to that they had met in London, and still two years before this, when he himself had been only a stripling of sixteen, they had become acquainted for the first time in Australia. And he marvelled how Luther Fortescue seemed to remain the same. Clad immaculately, almost dudishly, in age perhaps forty, he suggested two contradictory men combined in one — the shrewd efficient assistant he had been to Digby Middleton, and the pleasure-loving man-about-town.

  He came forward, a smile on his face, his gloved hand extended.

  “And so you’re here, Jerry,” he said, gazing up and down Jerome Middleton’s person. “Well — it seems good to see you. Your father” — he shook his head — ” your father would have gloried in having seen you once more before — ”

  He allowed the sentence to go unfinished.

  Jerry Middleton did not smile. “I wonder,” he said, taking the other’s outstretched hand, considerable bitterness in his voice. “God knows I tried to persuade him to let me come to his country — my own country — but always the same refusal. But how are you, Fortescue? I hope your afternoon is quite free. I want to ask you many questions.”

  Fortescue motioned to a near-by seat. They dropped down on it. “I have no doubt,” the older man said, “that there is much that you want to know — much that it was not possible for me to include in the cable I sent you. So just go ahead and ask what you like. When we’re finished we’ll go straight to Lockwood’s for a reading of your father’s will.”

  “There are one or two questions that I want to ask now,” replied the younger man. “First, just what was the cause of father’s dying so suddenly after the operation? And did he have any inkling that such an operation would be fatal?”

  “Well,” was Fortescue’s response, “it was on August the 6th, just about a month and eleven days ago, you see, that the surgeons’ consultation brought in a verdict that your father would have to be operated upon, the sooner the better. He was operated upon exactly a week after the surgeons’ conference. He seemed to rally for two days and a half, but then took a sudden turn for the worse and sank rapidly from the old heart trouble he had. He died late on the afternoon of the day I cabled you.”

  “Were his business affairs put into shape by him during his last days?” asked the younger man.

  “He was very busy,” replied Luther Fortescue, “during those last days before he went into the hospital. For one thing, he made many advertising contracts and went ahead with his newest remedy, Lotsapep, just as though he expected to boom it himself — to be here always. He also drew up his will with Attorney Lockwood — you know Lockwood, of course? — you met him in London.”

  “Yes, I remember him well,” remarked the younger man.

  “I think you have about the whole story,” said Fortescue.

  A
pause followed. Then Jerry Middleton broke it.

  “And now tell me, Fortescue, just what is the extent of father’s estate?”

  The older man looked, curiously startled, down at the younger. “You’re joking with me, are you not, Jerry? You don’t mean to say you don’t know?”

  “I do not know,” responded the other quite seriously.

  “Well, Jerry, I didn’t dream that you did not know the extent of his fortune. Well — to sum it all up — your father — well — was worth about ten million dollars.”

  Jerome Middleton’s eyes opened in startled amazement. “Ten million dollars, Fortescue? Over two million pounds? I knew that I was to come into great wealth — that my future would never be a question to me again. Yet the actual figures dazzle me.”

  “I should think they would,” replied Luther Fortescue, “if, as you say and I believe, you were kept in ignorance of them. Jerry, I read something interesting about you in the papers since you left Australia — an announcement of your engagement to Miss Pamela Martindale of our city, who was returning to America on the same boat with you.”

  Jerome Middleton appeared to be somewhat surprised by the information conveyed in Fortescue’s words.

  “Well,” he stammered, blushing a bit, “I did not know — that my engagement — ”

  But Fortescue interrupted him with a smile. “We Americans, Jerry, use the radio to receive society news as well as other kinds. But tell me about it yourself.”

  Middleton smiled faintly for the first time. “I’ll tell you more about it later. But now tell me, Fortescue, what are your plans? Just what salary are you employed at now? As I am to take over the Middleton properties, I want to familiarise myself with the situation.”

  “Ten thousand dollars a year was my salary,” replied the other man. “I flatter myself that I have been a very valuable man to your father. I am familiar with every item of the Middleton real estate holdings and every phase and detail of his proprietary medicine business. There is no angle of it all that I cannot handle. And I had hoped — well, I presumed to hope — that I might anticipate being offered the general managership of your estate.”

  But the younger man shook his head firmly. “Twenty-five years, Fortescue, I have fooled around waiting — waiting — waiting for this inexplainable banishment that father imposed upon me to be swept away by him. Now that it has been so swept away — perhaps in an unexpected manner — and I have come into the business, I am going to turn all my efforts to managing it for the benefit of everybody. A general manager would cost — what?”

  Fortescue shrugged his shoulders. “I think that you will be fortunate to secure one at fifty thousand dollars per year — considering the vast plants and real estate holdings of your father — and the many ramifications of his business. It would be but a small proportion of what the estate pays out in total salaries.”

  “Well, fifty thousand dollars given to a general manager might as well be saved to the estate,” was the younger man’s decisive and prompt reply, “when I have youth and energy, a decent amount of capability, I believe, and all I require is to be taught the customs and methods employed in this country in conducting business.”

  Fortescue bit his lip. It was plain to be seen that he was disappointed — that he had made calculations which had not worked out according to his speculations. Then he shrugged his shoulders with the air of the man who considers that nothing is final until it has been actually worked out to a practical conclusion, and sighed a half sigh. He gazed at his watch. “Well, if you have no further questions, let’s be getting along to the lawyer’s.” He rose, and led the way outside to where a line of taxis stood waiting. They climbed into one.

  “The First National Bank Building,” he told the driver. And they drew up in less than twenty minutes in the canyon of the downtown section, and were shortly entering the tall skyscraper that marked their destination.

  CHAPTER II

  “TO MY SON”

  THE offices of Andrew Lockwood, on the fourteenth floor of this very much up-to-date building, suggested somehow to Jerome Middleton the offices of lawyers in which he had sat in Australian cities; its furniture and its books were obviously those of a prior age in American business. Lockwood himself was a little, dried up, wizened sort of man, perhaps sixty years of age, frail of frame, skin slightly yellow from age, hair sparse, a bit bent of back, and with an old-fashioned batwing collar and black string tie. In his eyes was a kindly light.

  “So you have come, Herbert?” he asked. He looked up and down the figure of the younger man. “I declare, my boy, you have not changed much since I saw you in London with the Anzacs.” He smiled. “Step in, both of you.”

  He beckoned them into his private office, and stood aside as they entered. As he closed the door, and nodded toward two armchairs drawn up near his roll-top desk, he sat down in his own swivel-chair and regarded the two men curiously. Then he pressed a button at the side of his desk, and to the clerk who answered it gave a single order:

  “Will you go downstairs immediately to the offices of the Mid-West Trust Company and ask Mr. Searles, the vice-president, to step up here and to bring with him the — er — spectacles of Cagliostro? Yes — he will know about it.”

  With the departure of the clerk, he again regarded his visitors with that curious scrutiny. Then he turned his gaze toward the younger man. “I suppose, Herbert — by the way, my boy, do you call yourself Herbert or Jerome? Your father always referred to you by your middle name.”

  “It seemed most natural to be called Herbert in the letters from my father,” Middleton replied slowly. “But by other people I have always gone by my first name. So just use whatever name seems most natural to you, Mr. Lockwood.”

  Fortescue looked at his watch. “Well, perhaps now, Lockwood, that I’ve brought Mr. Middleton, the younger, over here, I might as well leave you two people together. And I can see you again after lunch.”

  But Lockwood raised his hand. “No, stay, Fortescue. When I asked you to bring Herbert over here on his arrival in Chicago I wanted your own presence as well as his. For you, you see, are involved in certain respects in Mr. Middleton senior’s will.”

  Fortescue looked surprised. He arrested his ascent from his chair in mid-air, and then sat down suddenly. “Well — if that’s the case — why, of course I’ll remain. I didn’t think the will would concern me in any way.” Lockwood turned once more to the younger of his two callers.

  “Your father, Herbert — or, rather, Jerome — shortly after the time the surgeons decided it was best for him to go under the knife — about three days, in fact — came to my office here and executed a will which he desired to supersede the usual formal will which he had filed in the past in the event of sudden demise. This will he executed on Saturday, the 9th of August, just three days before he entered the hospital. It was a rather peculiar will, to say the least, and I remonstrated with him with respect to various provisions of it, I beg of you to believe, but your father — well — you do not know your father, I daresay.”

  “I knew him pretty well,” said the younger man grimly, “in spite of the fact that he visited me for only an entire month every two years. I would not say that anyone would have much success in arguing against a conviction of his. He was just, kind, firm — but somewhat odd in his ideas. We never wholly understood each other, I agree.”

  “Well, as I say,” went on Lockwood, “I — ”

  But at this juncture there came a knock on the door, and the lawyer himself rose to open it. There stood in the opening a fine man of undoubted business bearing, a man of about forty-nine, with physique vigorous and well kept up, and a suit of rich but dark unobtrusive material which suggested that its owner was part of a great institution that was marked by extreme conservatism in thought and deed. He surveyed the three men and then strode forward, hand outstretched. Lockwood closed the door behind him.

  “Well, well, my boy,” the newcomer said. “Welcome — welcome — to our lan
d which must be strange to you. Two years, I think it is, since Mrs. Searles and I dropped in on you at Canterbury College, Christ church, New Zealand?”

  Jerome Middleton rose. “Yes — just two years, Mr. Searles. Everybody tells me I haven’t changed much. And I can say the same for you.”

  Lockwood pulled up an additional armchair for the fourth man. The old lawyer motioned Searles into it. He resumed his own and now addressed the three men together.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “now that we four are assembled here, we have — with the exception of poor Digby Middleton himself — the various people who are most intimately concerned in the provisions of Herbert’s father’s last will. Mr. Digby Middleton executed it; I drew it up for him, against my own convictions, I will admit; you, Fortescue, are mentioned in it; you, Herbert — or, rather, Jerome — are likewise represented in it; and Mr. Searles here represents the Mid-West Trust Company which is likewise mentioned in it.”

  He was fumbling in a pigeonhole of his desk as he spoke, and he now turned to them with a long envelope which he slit from end to end.

  “Mr. Digby Middleton’s estate, as I presume everyone of you must necessarily know, consists of approximately ten million dollars in real estate and factory properties, together with a goodly amount of bonds and stocks which he accumulated. You, Searles, are of course in a position to know that your company holds the original of this will which was deposited in your vaults with instructions that it should be read only after young Middleton’s arrival. And now that all parties mentioned in it are present, and the requisite forty days have elapsed for Herbert to get here, it can be read and then probated.” As he talked he unfolded a number of carbon sheets stapled together with a gleaming brass clip, and bound in stiff blue covers. “I shall now read it, if I may presume on your various attentions.” And clearing his voice, Lockwood began:

  “I, Digby Middleton, of the City of Chicago, County of Cook and State of Illinois, being of sound and disposing mind and memory, do hereby make, publish and declare this as and for my last will and testament, hereby revoking all wills by me heretofore made and hereby intending to dispose of all the property of which I may die seised or possessed, or to which I may be in any way entitled at the time of my death.