Eleven Possible Cases Part 13

When the cablegram from Paris informing them of their extraordinary luck reached the Winkletip Brothers, they were down in the cellar of the old tenement which served as their place of business, with their long jean coats on, busily engaged in sorting onions. As the Winkletips were only a little past fifty, and as strong as hickory k.n.o.bs, their families were quite satisfied to get only a life estate in the Dingee million, for, barring accidents, the brothers had twenty-five or thirty years to live yet.

True, Brother John had a son, Cyrus, who would soon be of age, but he was a worthless wight, whose normal condition was alcoholic stupor, barely characterized with sufficient lucidity to enable him to distinguish rotten vegetables from sound.

"He will die years before his father," every one remarked, "and then the gambler's money will go where it ought to go."

There had been a fire next door to the Winkletips about the time the good news had arrived from Paris; a huge warehouse had burned down, leaving a brick wall towering sixty feet above the old wooden tenement in which the brothers did business. They had given notice to the authorities; but the inspectors had p.r.o.nounced the wall perfectly safe.

So the two brothers continued to come and go, in their best Sunday clothes, however, for they were only engaged in settling up the old business.

Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the huge wall fell with a terrific crash upon the wooden tenement, crushing it like an egg-sh.e.l.l.

When the two brothers were taken out from the ruins, John was p.r.o.nounced dead and a coroner's permit was given to remove him to a neighboring undertaker's establishment. William lived six hours, conscious to the last and grateful to an all-wise Providence that his worthless nephew would now be excluded from any control over the Dingee million.

John Winkletip was a gra.s.s widower, his wife, an Englishwoman, having abandoned him and returned to England, and for many years he had made his home with his only other child, a widowed daughter, Mrs. Timmins, who was openly opposed to many of her father's peculiar notions, as she termed them, one of which was his strong advocacy of cremation; he being one of the original stockholders and at the time of his death a director of the Long Island Cremation Society.

Consequently Mrs. Timmins gave orders that immediately after the coroner's inquest, her father's body should be removed to her residence in Harlem, but as the officers of the Cremation Society held the solemnly executed direction and authorization of their late friend and a.s.sociate to incinerate his remains, they were advised by the counsel of their corporation that such an instrument would justify them in taking possession of the remains at the very earliest moment possible and removing it to the crematory.

Warned by the undertakers of Mrs. Timmins' threatened interference, they resolved not to risk even the delay necessary to procure a burial casket; in fact it would be a useless expense, anyway, and consequently John Winkletip began his last ride on earth lying in the cool depths of the undertaker's ice box.

As Mrs. Timmins's cab turned into Washington Street she met a hea.r.s.e, but not until she had reached the undertaker's establishment was her suspicion transformed into certainty by being told that her father's body was already on its way to the crematory.

Mrs. Timmins was a long-headed woman. She knew the uncertainties of cab transportation through the crowded streets below Ca.n.a.l, and dismissing her cab at the Chambers Street station of the Third Avenue Elevated, she was soon speeding on her way to the Long Island City ferry.

This she reached just as a boat was leaving the slip. Misfortune number one. When she finally reached the Long Island side, she threw herself into the carriage nearest at hand, crying out:

"To the crematory! Five dollars extra if you get me there in time!"

It was not many minutes before Mrs. Timmins became aware of the fact that the horse was next to worthless, and could scarcely be lashed into a respectable trot. Mrs. Timmins was nearly frantic. Every minute her head was thrust out of the window to urge the hackman to greater speed.

There was but one consoling thought--the hea.r.s.e itself might get blocked or might have missed a boat!

As again and again her head was thrust out of the carriage window her hair became disheveled, for she had removed her hat, and the superst.i.tious Hibernian on the box was upon the point of abandoning his post at sight of the wild and crazed look presented by Mrs. Timmins. Was she not some one's ghost, making this wild and mysterious ride?

But the promise of an extra five dollars kept the man at his post.

Suddenly a cry of joy escaped Mrs. Timmins's lips. The hea.r.s.e was just ahead of them; but its driver had the better horses, and half suspecting that something was wrong, he whipped up vigorously and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Mrs. Timmins's horse was now as wet as if he had been dipped into the river, and she expected every minute to see him give out; but, strange to say, he had warmed up to his work, and now, in response to the driver's urging, broke into a run.

Again Mrs. Timmins caught a glimpse of the black coach of death in the dust clouds ahead of her. The race became every instant more exciting.

It was a strange sight, and instinctively the farmers, in their returning vegetable wagons, drew aside to let them pa.s.s. Once more the hea.r.s.e disappeared in the dust clouds. This was the last Mrs. Timmins saw of it until she drew up in front of the crematorium. There it stood, with its black doors thrown wide open. She had come too late! Her father's body had already been thrust into the fiery furnace.

The antagonism of Winkletip's family to his views concerning the cremation of the dead was an open secret with every attache of the society, and the men in charge were determined that the society should come out the winner. They were on the lookout for the body. Everything, to the minutest detail, was in readiness. The furnace had been pushed to its greatest destroying power, and hence was it that haste overcame dignity when the foam-flecked and panting horses of the undertaker drew up in front of the entrance of the crematory.

The ice-chest was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the hea.r.s.e, borne hurriedly into the furnace-room, set upon the iron platform, wheeled into the very center of the white flames, whose waving, curling, twisting tongues seemed reaching out to their fullest length, impatient for their prey, and the iron doors slammed shut with a loud, resounding clangor.

At that instant a woman, hatless and breathless, with disheveled hair, burst into the furnace-room.

"Hold! Hold!" she shrieked, and then her hands flew to her face, and staggering backward and striking heavily against the wall, she sank, limp and lifeless, in a heap on the stone floor of the furnace-room.

But the two men in charge had neither eyes nor ears for Mrs. Timmins. As the doors closed they sprang to their posts of observation, in front of the two peep-holes, and stood watching the effect of the flames upon the huge ice-chest.

Its wooden covering parted here and there with a loud crack, laying bare the metal case, from the seams of which burst fitful puffs of steam. Now came a sight so strange and curious that the two men held their breath as they gazed upon it! By the vaporizing of the water from the melted ice the flames were pushed back from the chest, and it lay there for an instant, as if protected by some miraculous aura.

Then happened something which caused the men to reel and stagger as if their limbs were paralyzed by drink, and which painted their faces with as deep a pallor as death's own hand could have laid upon them.

From the furnace depths came forth a dull, m.u.f.fled cry of "Help! Help!"

Making a desperate effort, the men tore open first the outer and then the inner doors of the fire chamber. As the air rushed in, the lid of the metal chest burst silently open. Again the cry of "Help!" rang out, and two hands quivered for an instant above the edge of the chest, then with a loud and defiant roar the flames closed in upon it, and began to lick it up ravenously. The doors were banged shut, and John Winkletip had his way.

But the Dingee million seemed to draw back instinctively from the touch of the worthless Cy Winkletip.

With loud cries of joy, the various beneficiaries under Martha Delury's will now discovered that Cyrus Winkletip was born on the 11th day of August, and that as his father had departed this life on the 10th day of August, the son was not of full age when his father died. But the law put an end to this short-lived joy by making known one of its curious bits of logic, which so often startle the layman.

It was this: The law takes no note of parts of a day, and therefore as Cyrus Winkletip was of age on the first minute of his twenty-first birthday, he was also of age on the last minute of the day before--consequently on the first minute of the day before he was twenty-one!

This gave the Dingee million to Cy Winkletip!

Under constant and stringent surveillance and tutelage, Cy Winkletip was, after several years of as close application as was deemed safe in view of his weak mental condition, admitted to the ministry in accordance with the provisions of Miss Delury's will.

At last the wicked Dingee million seemed safely launched upon its task of undoing the wrong it had done; but Cy Winkletip's mind ran completely down in five years and he died a wretched slavering, idiot.

Mrs. Timmins was inclined to warn off the Dingee million with a gesture of horror; but, yielding to the solicitation of her friends, she consented to take t.i.tle in order that she might create a trust with it for some good and n.o.ble purpose. To this end, by a last will and testament she created and endowed the American Society for the Suppression of Gambling and Wager-laying, and then died.

The trustees at once began to erect the buildings called for, but before the society had had an opportunity to suppress a single gaming establishment, the lawyers, at the prayer of Mrs. John Winkletip, Mrs.

Timmin's mother, fell tooth and nail upon the trust, which was declared too "vague, shadowy, and indefinite to be executed," and the Dingee million, its roundness now sadly shrunken, made its way across the ocean to Mrs. John Winkletip, of Clapham Common, London.

She died last year and with her the wanderings of the Dingee million came to an end. She willed it to trustees for building and maintaining a Hospital for Stray Dogs and Homeless Cats, and those learned in the law say that the trust will stand.

A LOST DAY.

BY EDGAR FAWCETT.

"My Family," John Dalrymple would say, "have the strange failing (that is, nearly all of them except myself, on the paternal side) of----"

And then somebody would always try to interrupt him. At the Gramercy, the small but charming club of which he had been for years an honored member, they made a point of interrupting him when he began on his family failing. Not a few of them held to the belief that it was a myth of Dalrymple's imagination. Still, others argued, all of the clan except John himself had been a queer lot; there was no real certainty that they had not done extraordinary acts. Meanwhile, apart from his desire to delve among ancestral records and repeat tales which had been told many times before, he was a genuine favorite with his friends. But that series of family anecdotes remained a standing joke.

They all pitied him when it became known that his engagement to the pretty winsome widow, Mrs. Carrington, was definitely broken. He was past forty now, and had not been known to pay serious court to any woman before in at least ten years. Of course Mrs. Carrington was rich. But then her money could not have attracted Dalrymple, for he was rich himself, in spite of his plain way of living there in that small Twenty-second Street bas.e.m.e.nt house.

But the widow's money had doubtless lured to her side the gentleman who had cut poor Dalrymple out. A number of years ago, when this little occurrence which we are chronicling took place, it was not so easy as it is now to make sure of a foreigner's credentials and antecedents. The Count de Pommereul, a reputed French n.o.bleman of high position, had managed to get into the Gramercy as a six-months' member, and had managed also to cross the thresholds of numerous select New York drawing-rooms. At the very period of his introduction to Mrs. Carrington her engagement with Dalrymple had already become publicly announced.

Then, in a few weeks, society received a shock. Dalrymple was thrown over, and it transpired that the brilliant young widow was betrothed to the Count.

Dalrymple, calm and self-contained, had nothing to say on the subject of why he had received such shabby treatment, and n.o.body ventured to interrogate him. Some people believed in the Count, others thought that there was a ring of falsity about him, for all his frame was so elegantly slender and supple, for all his mustache was so glossily dark, and his eyes so richly l.u.s.trous. Dalrymple meanwhile hid his wound, met the Count constantly at the Club, though no longer even exchanging bows with him, and--worked at his revenge in secret as a beaver works at the building of his winter ranch. He succeeded, too, in getting superb materials for that revenge. They surprised even himself when a few relatives and friends in Paris mailed him appalling doc.u.mentary evidence as to what sort of a character this Count really was. There is no doubt that he now held in his hand a thunderbolt, and had only to hurl it when he pleased.

He did not tell a single soul what he had learned. The thought of just how he should act haunted him for several days. One evening he went home from the club a little earlier than usual, and tossed restlessly for a good while after going to bed. When sleep came it found him still irresolute as to what course he should take.

It seemed to him that he had now a succession of dreams, but he could recall none of them on awaking. And he awoke in a peculiar way. There was yet no hint of dawn in the room, and only the light from his gas, turned down to a very dim star. He was sitting bolt upright in bed, and feverish, fatigued sensations oppressed him. "What have I been dreaming?" he asked himself again and again. But as only a confused jumble of memories answered him, he sank back upon the pillows, and was soon buried in slumber.

It was past nine o'clock in the morning when he next awoke. He felt decidedly better. Both the feverishness and the fatigue had left him. He went to the club and breakfasted there. It was almost empty of members, as small clubs are apt to be at that hour of the morning. But in the hall he met his old friend Langworth and bowed to him. Langworth, who was rather near-sighted, gave a sudden start and a stare. "How odd,"

thought Dalrymple, as he pa.s.sed on into the reading-room, "I hope there's nothing unexpected about my personal appearance." Just at the doorway of the room he met another old friend, Summerson, a man extremely strict about all matters of propriety. Summerson saw him and then plainly made believe that he had not seen. As they moved by one another Dalrymple said lightly, "Good-morning, old chap. How's your gout?"