The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton

On the following evening, Mr. Middleton and his bottle sat among a circle of some thirty persons who were gathered in the gloomy, lofty-ceiled parlor of Mr. Smitz. Before forming the circle, Mr. Smitz had addressed the company in a few well-chosen words, saying that a like purpose had brought all there that night, that as votaries of science and devotees of truth and persons of culture and refinement, mutual acquaintance could not but be pleasant as well as helpful, enabling those who sat together while witnessing the astounding and edifying phenomena they were soon to behold, to discuss these phenomena with reciprocal benefit – in view of all this, he hoped everybody would consider themselves introduced to everybody else.

Mr. Middleton, quickly inspecting the assemblage, whom he doubtless with great injustice denominated a crowd of sober dubs and solemn stiffs, so maneuvered that when all had drawn their chairs into a circle, a man deaf in the right ear sat at his left, while at his right sat a tall young lady, who though slightly pale was of an interesting appearance, notwithstanding. The somewhat tragic cast of her large and classic features was intensified by a pair of great mournful eyes and a wistful mouth, the whole framed in luxuriant masses of black hair, and altogether she was a girl whom one would give a second and third glance anywhere.

It developing in their very first exchange of remarks that she had never been present at a seance and that she could not look forward to what they were about to witness without great trepidation, Mr. Middleton offered to afford her every moral support and such physical protection as one mortal can assure another when facing the unknown powers of another world. At the extinguishment of the gas, he took her left hand, and finding it give a faint tremor, he took the other and was pleased to note that, so far as her hands gave evidence, thereupon her fears were quite allayed.

A breeze, chill and dank as the breath of a tomb, blew upon the company, and from the deep darkness into which they all stared with straining, unseeing eyes, came the solemn sound of Mr. Smitz, speaking hurriedly in somber tones in some sonorous unknown tongue, and low rustlings and whirrs and soft footfalls and faint rattlings that grew stronger, louder, each moment, swelling up into the stamp of a mailed heel and the clangor of arms as Mr. Smitz scratched a match and the light of a gas jet glanced upon helmet, corslet, shield, and greaves of a brazen-armored Greek warrior, standing in the middle of the circle, alive, in full corporeal presence!

“Leonidas, hero of Thermopylæ!” shouted Mr. Smitz, and then continued at a conversational pitch, “if any of you wish to speak to him in his own language, you have full permission to do so.”

Those present lacking either the desire to accost the dread presence, or a command of the ancient Greek, after a bit Mr. Smitz turned off the gas and the noises that had heralded the visitant’s appearance began in reverse order, and at their cease, the gas being turned on again, there was the circle quite bare of any evidence that a Greek warrior in full panoply had but now stood there.

At these prodigies, the young lady trembled, but you could have applied all sorts of surgical devices for measuring nerve reaction to Mr. Middleton from the crown of his head to where his parallel feet held between them the copper bottle, and not have detected a tremor.

Mr. Smitz was reaching up to extinguish the gas once more, when a big, athletic blonde man, whose appearance and garb proclaimed him an Englishman, interrupted him.

“I am going to request you to materialize the spirit with whom I wish to converse, the next time. I have to catch a train at eleven and there are a number of things I would like to do before that. Yesterday, you promised me that you would materialize him first thing.”

“Yesterday,” said Mr. Smitz with a slight hauteur, “I could not look forward and see that I was to have such a large and cultivated gathering. You cannot, sir, ask to have your own mere personal business, for business it is with you, take precedence of the scientific quests of all these other ladies and gentlemen. I have planned to materialize men of many nations, with whom all may converse if they please; Confucius, the great Chinese; Cæsar, the great Roman; Mohammed, the great Turk; Powhattan, the great Indian, and others. Your business must wait.”

“My friends,” said the Englishman, appealing to the assemblage, “I throw myself upon your good nature. My grandfather was the owner of a small estate in Ireland. In a rebellion, the Irish burned every building on the place and it has since been deserted. He had buried a sum of money before he fled during the rebellion and we have a chart telling where it was buried. But the chart referred to buildings and trees that were subsequently utterly destroyed. We have no marks to guide us. I am sadly in need of money. My grandfather’s ghost could tell me where the treasure is. I shall suffer financial detriment if I do not catch the train at eleven and must attend to several matters before that. You have heard my case. May I not ask you all to grant me the indulgence of having my affair disposed of now?”

Mr. Middleton and several others were about to endorse the justice of the Englishman’s request, when Mr. Smitz hastily forestalled them by saying that all should be heard from and turning to four personages who sat together at a point where the line of chairs of the circle passed before a large and mysterious cabinet set in the corner of the wall, and asking their opinion, they all four in one voice began to object to any alteration of the program of the evening, adverting somewhat to the Boer War, the oppressions in Ireland, and to the Revolution and the War of 1812. When they had done, there was no one who cared to say a word for the Englishman or an Englishman, and Mr. Smitz announced that Confucius would be the next materialization and that all might address him in his native tongue. Of this permission, a small red-head gentleman, whose demeanor advertised him to be in a somewhat advanced state of intoxication, availed himself and remarked slowly:

“Hello, John. Washee, washee? Sabe how washee? Wlanter be Melican man?”

To this the great sage vouchsafed no reply save a contemptuous stare, and the red-headed gentleman observed that doubtless the Chinese language had changed a good deal in two thousand years. All languages did.

From out the darkness under whose cover the Chinaman was modestly divesting himself of his body, came the voice of Mr. Smitz, rich, unctuous, saying:

“The next visitant will be from that great race we all admire so much, the noble race which has done so much to build up this country, which in every field of American endeavor has been a guiding star to us all. It gives me great pleasure to tell you that our next visitant from the world beyond is that great soldier, statesman, and patriot, King Brian Boru.”

“Who the devil wants to see that or any other paddy?” exclaimed the voice of the Englishman, choleric, savage. “Let me out of this blarsted, cheating hole. Who wants to see one of that race of quarrelsome, thieving, wretched rapscallions?”

Whack! Smash! Bang! Crash! The assemblage was thrown into a pitiable state of terror by a most extraordinary combat and tumult taking place somewhere in the circle. The remonstrances of Mr. Smitz and the oaths of the Englishman rose against the general din of the expostulations of the men and cries of the women. Match after match was struck by the men, only to be blown out by some mysterious agency, after giving momentary glimpses of the Englishman astride of a man on the floor, pummelling him lustily, while Mr. Smitz pulled at the Englishman’s shoulders. At length the noise died away, the sound of some one remonstrating, “let me at him oncet, let me at the spalpeen, he got me foul,” coming back from some remote region of the atmosphere, as under the compelling force of the will of the great Smitz, the bodily envelope of the Irish hero was dissipated and his soul went back to the beyond.

Then did a match reach the gas without being blown out. Beneath the chandelier stood Mr. Smitz and the four personages who had sat before the cabinet and had views on the Boer War.

“What an awful, sacrilegious thing you have done,” exclaimed Mr. Smitz. “You have struck the dead.”

“He hit me first.”

“Your remarks about the Irish angered him. He could not restrain himself.”

“Well, he couldn’t whip me. Next time you materialize him, he’ll show a black eye. Let me out of here, you cheat, you imposter, you and your pals, or I’ll fix you as I did Brian Boru.”

Though the company did not take the Englishman’s view, they were all anxious to go. They were quite unstrung by what had occurred, this combat between the living and the dead. They looked with horrified awe at the spot where it had taken place. There stood the living combatant, still full of the fire of battle. Him whom he had fought was gone on the winds to the voiceless abodes of the departed, a breath, a shadow, a sudden chill on the cheek and nothing more. For a brief space resuming his old fleshly habitude, with it had come the cholers and hatreds of the flesh and once more he avenged his country’s wrongs.

“Say,” said the Englishman, with a malign look on his face, as he paused in the door, “if you’ve got that mick patched up any down in the kitchen, I’ll give him another chance, if he wishes. Tell him to pick a smaller man next time.”

To this, Mr. Smitz made no reply, but flashed a look that would have frozen any one less insolent and truculent than the Englishman.

All this time Mr. Middleton had been very agreeably employed in a corner of the room, for the young lady in an access of terror had thrown herself into his arms and there she had remained during the whole affrighting performance. To forerun any possible apprehension that he was going to extricate himself and leave her, he held her with considerable firmness, whispering encouragement into her ear the while. Preparing to accompany her home, he had almost left the room before he bethought him of the copper bottle, which he had abandoned when springing up to get the young lady out of the circle and away from danger. He soon found it lying against the wall, whither it had rolled or been kicked during the melee.

The young lady continuing to be in a somewhat prostrated state after her late experience, on the way home Mr. Middleton supported her by his right arm about her waist, while she found further stay by resting her left arm across his shoulders, she being a tall young lady. Their remaining hands met in a clasp of cheer and encouragement on his part, of trusting dependence on hers. Arriving at her door in this fashion, it was but natural for Mr. Middleton – who was a very natural young man – to clasp her in a good-night embrace, but upon essaying to put the touch of completion to these joys which a kiss would give, she drew away her head, saying:

“Why, how dare you, sir! I never met you before. Why, I haven’t even been formally introduced to you.”

Mr. Middleton humbly pleading for the salute, she continued to express her surprise that he should prefer such a request upon no acquaintance at all, that he should even faintly expect her to grant it, and so on, all the while leaning languishing upon his breast with all her weight. Whereupon Mr. Middleton lost patience and with incisive sarcasm he began:

“One would think that you who refuse this kiss were not the girl who stands here within my arms, my lips saying this into her ears, her cheek almost touching mine. Doubtless it is some one else. Pray tell me, what great difference is there between kissing a stranger and hugging him.”

At these brutal, downright words, leaving the poor young thing nothing to say, no little pretence even to herself that she had guarded the proprieties, had comported herself circumspectly, leaving her with not even a little rag of a claim that she had conducted herself with seemly decorum, she sprang from him and began to cry. Whatever the cause, Mr. Middleton could not look upon feminine unhappiness with composure and here where he was himself responsible, he was indeed smitten with keen remorse and hastening to comfort her, gathered her into his arms and there he was abasing and condemning himself and telling her what a dear, nice girl she was – and kissing away her tears.

“Let me give you a piece of advice,” he said, fifteen minutes later, as he was about to release her and depart. “It is not best ever to let a man hug you. Never,” he said, pausing to imprint a lingering kiss upon the girl’s yielding lips, “never let a man kiss you again until that moment when you shall become his affianced wife.”

Mr. Middleton departed in that serene state of mind which the consciousness of virtue bestows, for he had given the young woman valuable advice that would doubtless be of advantage to her in the future and he reflected upon this in much satisfaction as he fared away with the eyes of the young woman watching him from where she looked out of the parlor window.

Reaching into his right coat pocket to transfer the copper bottle to the opposite pocket, in order that his coat might not be pulled out of shape, as he grasped the neck, one of his fingers went right into the mouth! The seal of Solomon was gone! A less resolute and quick-witted person might have been alarmed, but reasoning that the seal must have been knocked off during the fight at Mr. Smitz’s and nothing had happened since, he boldly examined the bottle. He could see a white substance as he looked into it, and by the aid of a stick he fished out a wad of wool tightly stuffed in the neck. A metallic chinking followed the removal of the wadding and set his heart thumping rapidly. He looked up and down the street. No one in sight. He tilted the bottle up to the light of a street lamp and saw a yellow gleam. He shook it and into his hands flowed a stream of gold sequins! He could not sufficiently admire the ruse of Prince Houssein. Money on the first messenger there had been none.

In a center more given to numismatics, or had he been willing to wait and sell the coins gradually, Mr. Middleton might have secured more than he did for the gold pieces, all coined at Bagdad in the early caliphates and very valuable. But he disposed of them in a lump to a French gentleman on La Salle Street for fourteen hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Calling on the young lady of Englewood within the next few days, he made no reference to these events, though she asked him several times during the evening what he had been doing lately. He did, however, hint at having profited by a certain fortunate “deal,” as he called it, but not a word did he say concerning the mournful girl or anything remotely connected with her.

Hesitating to hurt the emir’s feelings by exposing the obtuseness of his ancestor Noureddin and the foolish superstition of his descendants ever since, Mr. Middleton said nothing of these transactions when once more he sat in the presence of the urbane and accomplished prince of the tribe of Al-Yam. Having handed him a bowl of delicately flavored sherbet, the emir began the narration of The Pleasant Adventures of Dr. McDill.