The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro Read online

  “The will is most definite on that point,” put in the one who was the victim of that document. “I am left high and dry with exactly seventy-five dollars per month.”

  “Lord, I wish I had that much for life,” put in Teddy Burke. “If I could be sure I could eat regularly and have a room, I’d cut this grind and get into a free-lance game of some sort.”

  “But,” objected Ramsey of the red hair, “if that’s all you got, Ted, out of ten million dollars, you’d be so sore you couldn’t sputter. Remember the time you got cut off with a bare thousand in the will of that maiden aunt of yours who left her other four thousand to a home for cats?” The speaker turned to Middleton. “Ted Burke here demonstrated how quick one man can drink up a thousand dollars. Did it in thirty days flat, didn’t you, Ted?”

  “Thanks to most of you fellows’ copious thirsts — yes,” replied Burke.

  A general laugh followed Ted Burke’s persiflage, and the men prepared to go. They shook hands all round with Middleton, one slapped him on the back, and after all taking generously from a box of choice cigars which had remained in the library, and which Middleton courteously proffered them, they departed in high good humour. Little did Middleton realise it, but he had made fast friends with the American Press.

  He glanced at the clock, ticking away on the library wall. It was twenty minutes to two. He stepped out to the telephone and called a taxicab. Then he donned his hat, gloves and cane — this time not for the purpose of being photographed — but for a real reason. For the hour had come when he was to see the girl who had given him her love.

  CHAPTER IV

  THE GOLDEN-HAIRED GIRL

  UNION PARK, looking down from the west edge of which stood the Martindale family mansion, was a little park of about two city squares in extent on Chicago’s west side. Even unfamiliar as he was with this giant American metropolis that more than once he had heard referred to as “The London of the West,” Middleton could grasp with little difficulty that it stood in a section of the city that once, two decades ago perhaps, had been a highly aristocratic neighbourhood, but which was now gone to seed, as it were.

  The row of houses in front of which his taxi drew up were ancient structures indeed, comprising double residences with stone steps and giant balustrades of stone, with like balustrades separating the two sides of each house. The only manner in which the Martindale residence differed from the rest was that in its great front window with its curved glass panes was no sign reading “Rooms to rent”; it stood on a larger lot, with a side lawn and a driveway in bad condition, and was not double.

  He dismissed his taxi, and going up the steps curiously, rang the bell. A white-capped maid, who seemed, somehow, in her handling of his call, just a bit new in her position, answered the door and ushered him into the parlour He had waited a full five minutes perhaps before Pamela swept into the room and with a little kittenish cry threw herself into his arms. He held her somewhat clumsily, and looked gratifyingly at this being who was to become his wife. While not of his height, she was nevertheless tall, regal — her tallness giving her that queenly aspect.

  “My dear boy, my dear, dear boy,” she breathed in his ear, “How glad I am to see you. It — it has seemed a lifetime since we parted in San Francisco.”

  “And to me too,” he said gaily.

  She brushed his cheek with a kiss that seemed to be as a fleeting touch of crystallised love. And it brought back to him the memory of another kiss, the donor of which he had never seen. But that other kiss and that other incident he thrust quickly from his mind, as he had so often before.

  “And you, dear,” he inquired, “did you have your visit with your grand-aunt, all right?”

  She nodded. She led him over to a mid-Victorian settee and together they sat down. “Yes, dear, and it was fortunate, for when we are married we may not have time enough to go travelling that far west again.”

  “Perhaps not,” he said, his face darkening, “for I shall have to work.”

  She smiled. “You will have your joke. Dear boy, the Middleton properties can go on successfully without your help.”

  He bent over and kissed the tip of her shell-like ear as by a sudden peculiar impulse which he could not master. Then he took from his pocket the case containing the spectacles of Mr. Joseph Balsamo, better known to history as Count Cagliostro. Opening it, he held them up for her to see.

  “How would you like your husband in a pair of glasses like that?” he asked curiously.

  She stared open-mouthed. “Where on earth, dear, did you ever get such a pair of — of sun-goggles as that?”

  “Well,” he said quietly, “since my arrival here I have had my father’s will read to me. In his will he leaves me specifically a certain debt of honour connected with a wager he made while alive — namely that I am to wear these during all my waking hours for one year of my life — every place — everywhere. Do you think you would fall out of love with me were I to pay such a debt?” His question was quizzical more than interrogative.

  She was serious for just a moment, and then she laughed gaily. “Why, no — not at all.” She grew serious once more. “But, dear, are you fooling me? Did your father really impose such a debt upon you?”

  He nodded. “He did.”

  “Well, fathers are strange creatures. Father imposed some restrictions upon mamma with respect to her enjoyment of the estate here which he left, and poor mamma has been prevented from doing many things she would have done otherwise. But this — this provision of your father’s — is the strangest of all.”

  “Isn’t it?” he replied quietly. He put the spectacles away.

  “But it’s only for a year,” she commented. “I presume he even made your enjoyment of his estate dependent on your carrying out that provision?” She made a little airy gesture. “But what of it? If merely wearing those for a year gives you full control of your estate — instead of provisional control — well then, dear, you’ll have to wear them, that’s all.”

  He grew serious. “I don’t have to wear them though, Pamela. The wearing of them is left entirely to my own honour. And as to the estate, I get seventy-five dollars per month.”

  She frowned and looked a bit startled. “For how long?” Her question came with startling business-like brusqueness.

  “For life, dearest,” he said, taking her hand. “My father, I am sorry to say, did not see fit to trust me with his estate, and I am, in addition, permanently barred from being employed by it or enjoying any of its profits. Seventy-five dollars per month — for life. That was all I got.”

  She stared at him, thunderstruck. Her blue eyes bore the light of an outraged being in them. Her breast began to heave and she rose. “Do — do you mean to tell me,” she half ejaculated, half panted, “that — that you are cut off with a measly beggarly pittance of seventy-five dollars per month?” She broke into a smile again. “You’re joking with your Pamela, aren’t you, dear?”

  He shook his head to her question. “I wish I were. You can call up Andrew Lockwood, my father’s attorney, who will corroborate the unhappy facts.” He glanced at her white face. Then he took her hand tenderly. “But this makes no difference to you, does it, dear? Aboard the boat you so often told me that — ”

  But he did not complete his sentence, for she suddenly jerked her hand away from him as though he were a creature infected with some disease. “Seventy — five — dollars per month!” Her voice at the end had risen to a shrill scream. “How — how dare you push yourself upon me with a pittance like that. Oh, you cad, you cruel cad, to pretend on shipboard that you were your father’s heir. You — you knew you were not. Seventy — seventy-five dollars per month. Why — why, one of my gowns costs more than that. And so — and so — you’re — you’re cut off.” With an obvious effort she collected herself and grew suddenly cold and statuesque. “And may I ask, Mr. Middleton, whether you are here to release me from my engagement? Why — why — why — ” Words evidently failed her.

  He
had stood up by now. He was very white in the face. This sudden turn in affairs and the sudden metamorphosis in a woman, only one side of whom he had ever seen, was rather startling. “I didn’t dream,” he stammered, “that it would make — well — a great difference to you, Pamela. I would work. We would not be altogether poor. You told me, you know — you told me on shipboard that you loved me for myself alone. You told me — ”

  He stopped. For with her left hand she had jerked a silken bell-cord that hung down from the near-by portières. With her right she was holding forth his platinum and diamond ring that he had purchased with his all from the Jewish diamond salesman aboard the Polynesian. “Mr. Middleton” — her tones were icy — ” you have, I am constrained to say, more impudence — more brass, than any man I have ever met. Why — why — the audacity of you — to still expect me to marry you. Why, man, you’re a beggar — you’re not even as well off as a beggar.” At this juncture the maid appeared in the doorway. “Marie, show Mr. Middleton out.” And, chest still heaving, her blue eyes flashing cold fire, she swept from the room as an injured, insulted creature of whom a base advantage had been taken.

  As in a daze he took from the maid his hat and his cane, and in the same daze went down the steps of the big house, the grass and trees of Union Park across the way making only a greenish blur in front of his eyes. Looking down he saw that his left hand was clenched like a baby’s fist, and he opened it curiously. In his palm lay a sparkling one and one-half carat stone that glistened in the sunlight in its platinum setting.

  A sewer opening loomed a few feet distant. Into its gaping orifice he tossed the bauble. Then he turned on his heel, and marched blindly on. Another cynic had been born in America.

  CHAPTER V

  THE MISSING YEAR

  IT was just a small item — covering scarcely an inch of type in the Morning Times — but to Jerome Middleton, reading the society columns whence he had strayed more by accident than from any other cause from the help wanted ads., it marked the closing of one chapter of his life at least.

  “Mrs. Sarah Martindale of 108 North Ashland Boulevard announces the engagement and coming marriage of her daughter, Pamela Gladys, to Mr. Carleton van Ware of the Chicago Newtown Club. The marriage will take place at the newly-built St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church on North Michigan Avenue and East Ohio Street, at 9 in the evening, Thursday, October 9, and the young couple, in company with the bride’s mother, will depart at once for London, where they will take up permanent residence, sailing on the Megantic at noon, Saturday, October 11.”

  Several times he read it, an ironical smile hovering around the corners of his mouth. Since that memorable day, just a week before, when he had stridden blindly forth from the Ashland Boulevard home, a cynical change had come in his soul — and now for the first time he wondered whether he had really ever loved the golden girl, or whether the memory of another’s lips was to supplant that brief and very unsatisfactory romance which had endured for scarcely more than the length of an ocean journey.

  He finally laid aside this paper of current date, and arising went over to the desk in the old library that had been his father’s, and from a pigeon-hole in it abstracted a bunch of carefully folded newspapers — sections of newspapers, perhaps — which constituted the Scimitar and the Courier of the Saturday night a week ago and the Despatch and the Times of the Sunday morning following that. Glancing over them for a moment again, he fell to wondering just how quickly, following their appearance, had the plans of the Martindales rushed to the conclusion embodied in the society paragraph he had just read.

  Not a one but contained a most blatant display story of himself and his heritage, with, in each case, a picture of himself dressed for the street in his English clothes and cane, and a companion picture of that same self adorned with the grotesque spectacles that made the story what it was. Even the spectacles themselves came in for their share of publicity, for an enlarged photograph of them appeared, with the copyright line of the Inter-continental News Service well in evidence.

  He shook his head and folded the papers carefully together again. And thus he was occupied when the ‘phone rang without the library and old Uncle Jed with his white woolly head and bent back called his new young master to it. But Middleton stopped on his way to the instrument.

  “By the way, Uncle Jed, it’s just about a week since my father’s will was entered for probate. What arrangements are being made to take care of your wages — also Christina’s?”

  Uncle Jed made an obedient bow. “Mist’ Fo’tescue done sen’ me a chaick las’ night, Mist’ Jerome, and also one to Christina. He call me up heah whilst you wuz out yistiddy and say de chaicks gwine come evvy week f’um de old marster’s estate, and we gwine go on and wu’k here an’ get paid.”

  “I see,” Middleton nodded slowly. And dismissing the subject entirely he went to the ‘phone.

  As in the old adage that when you speak of the devil the devil appears, he found Fortescue himself on the wire.

  “How are you getting along, Jerry?” was his immediate query.

  “Quite all right, Fortescue, thanks. I’ve explored a portion here and there of this interesting city of yours, but just now I’m exploring the help wanted advertisements rather intensively. You see, Fortescue, I haven’t a shilling, and that seventy-five dollars per month will be taken up for many months to come by the amount already advanced me out of the estate to get here. So I’ve got to get work right on the spot and without any loss of time. I’m down to ten dollars. I’ve got to get some money.”

  “Well, Jerry, money is just precisely what I wanted to talk to you about,” was Fortescue’s response. “In the first place, something rather interesting has come up in connection with those superannuated spectacles your father left you, and if by any chance you haven’t got disgusted by this time and smashed them all to pieces or thrown them away, I can see where a nice little wad of bills will be eventually reposing in your pocket-book.” He paused. “And in the second place, I’ve got a job for you — a somewhat strange job, too, I confess, but if it’s money you want then I think I can fix you up a hundred times better than you can fix yourself up by scanning the want ads.”

  “A position — a position with my father’s properties?” asked Jerry Middleton eagerly, half hoping that perhaps a legal loophole at last had been found in his father’s will.

  “No,” said Fortescue briefly. “No — I’m sorry to say.” He paused. “You know what it means if I employ you. It means that I can be deposed as general manager. I want to have a talk with you to-night — not to-morrow, but to-night.”

  “All right. I’ll come at once. By the way, Fortescue, did you read the society columns of the Times this morning?”

  “I did, Jerry — at least I did after my attention was called to it by someone else. In fact that item you have reference to is connected with the very thing I want to talk to you about.” He paused. “I’m awfully sorry to hear about your being — er — being — ”

  “Being thrown over,” supplied the younger man.

  “Well — thrown over if you will. But, anyway, jump over here. I’ve got some very important things to ask you and also to tell you. I’ll look for you in twenty minutes.”

  “As soon as I get a bus,” said Jerome Middleton. And he hung up.

  He took his English bowler, which each day was beginning to be more hateful to him, and, dressed in that very English suit which had begun to be likewise displeasing, left the Astor Street residence. Stepping a fraction of a block over to the Drive, he flagged a northbound bus under the frosted lamps that lighted the boulevard like two sinuous illuminated serpents for as far as the eye could reach in either direction, and shortly he stood in Fortescue’s living-room, looking about him.

  The living-room was cheerful, to say the least, for it was filled with deer-heads and fishing paraphernalia, stuffed game fish, and with a few fishpoles hooked over each other. A doorway hung with heavy portières seemed to give access to an ad
joining room that might have been a bedroom, and across the room was a real fireplace that was equipped to burn real coal and wood. Fortescue himself was clad in a bright scarlet dressing-gown that in connection with his sleek black hair parted in the middle gave him almost the appearance of a magazine poster. He was smoking a pipe, and he surveyed his visitor smilingly, as the latter stood on the grey monotone rug gazing fascinatedly at the trophies on the walls.

  “Seems to interest you, Jerry. Do you fish?”

  “Well — I fish at fishing,” was the other’s reply. “I think I’d make an enthusiastic angler — but, somehow, I never seem to have really had the time or opportunity to practise up.”

  “Good,” was Fortescue’s answer. “Perhaps we’ll give you a chance to indulge in it to your heart’s content.”

  Nothing was said for a few moments, and then Middleton drove straight to the question in hand.

  “I think, Fortescue, you said you had something of interest to tell me about some money to be obtained from those spectacles father left me.” He paused. “And you said, also, you had something in the line of work to suggest — or to offer?”

  Fortescue nodded. “Yes, to your first question; and yes — to your second, but work of a very unusual nature, I confess.” He looked at his watch. “Not in a hurry to get away, are you, Jerry? I want to have an intimate talk with you. There are a number of things I want to ask you.”

  “Nothing on whatever. Just ask away.”

  “All right. I will. But first a little matter of business. Searles of the Mid-West Trust Company rang me up to-day and asked me whether you had ever given me a receipt for those ancient spectacles we’ve already referred to. I told him no, but that I expected you up here to-night and I would have you sign it, and if he’d send a clerk in to pick it up about nine o’clock it would close that matter at least. Purely a technicality, of course, but a trust company is a devil for punctiliousness.”