Tales of Fantasy and Fact Part 16

"It is what I wanted everybody to understand at the time," said the book-keeper, breaking silence at last. "But it wasn't so. The boy was shot, but he wasn't killed. I hoped that it would be a warning to him, and he would make a fresh start. Friends of mine got him a place in Mexico, but luck was against him--so he wrote me--and he lost that.

Then an old comrade of mine gave him another chance out in Denver, and for a while he kept straight and did his work well. Then he broke down once more and he was discharged. For six months I did not know what had become of him. I've found out since that he was a tramp for weeks, and that he walked most of the way from Colorado to New York. This fall he turned up in the city, ragged, worn out, sick. I wanted to order him away, but I couldn't. I took him back and got him decent clothes and took him to look for a place, for I knew that hard work was the only thing that would keep him out of mischief. He did not find a place, perhaps he did not look for one. But all at once I discovered that he had money. He would not tell me how he got it. I knew he could not have come by it honestly, and so I watched him. I spied after him, and at last I found that he was selling you to the Tuxedo Company."

"But how could he open the safe?" cried Mr. Wheatcroft. "You didn't know the new combination."

"I did not tell him the combination I did know," said the old book-keeper, with pathetic dignity. "And I didn't have to tell him. He can open almost any safe without knowing the combination. How he does it, I don't know; it is his gift. He listens to the wheels as they turn, and he sets first one and then the other; and in ten minutes the safe is open."

"How could he get into the store?" Mr. Whittier inquired.

"He knew I had a key," responded the old book-keeper, "and he stole it from me. He used to watch on Sunday afternoons till Mike went for a walk, and then he unlocked the store, and slipped in and opened the safe. Two weeks ago Mike came back unexpectedly, and he had just time to get out of one of the rear windows of this office."

"Yes," Paul remarked, as the Major paused, "Mike told me that he found a window unfastened."

"I heard you asking about it," Major Van Zandt explained, "and I knew that if you were suspicious he was sure to be caught sooner or later.

So I begged him not to try to injure you again. I offered him money to go away. But he refused my money; he said he could get it for himself now, and I might keep mine until he needed it. He gave me the slip yesterday afternoon. When I found he was gone I came here straight. The front door was unlocked; I walked in and found him just closing the safe here. I talked to him, and he refused to listen to me. I tried to get him to give up his idea, and he struck me. Then I left him, and I went out, seeing no one as I hurried home. That's when Mr. Wheatcroft followed me, I suppose. The boy never came back all night. I haven't seen him since; I don't know where he is, but he is my son, after all--my only son! And when Mr. Wheatcroft accused me, I confessed at last, thinking you might be easier on me than you would be on the boy."

"My poor friend," said Mr. Whittier, sympathetically, holding out his hand, which the Major clasped gratefully for a moment.

"Now that we know who was selling us to the Tuxedo people, we can protect ourselves hereafter," declared Mr. Wheatcroft. "And in spite of your trying to humbug me into believing you guilty, Major, I'm willing to let your son off easy."

"I think I can get him a place where he will be out of temptation, because he will be kept hard at work always," said Paul.

The old book-keeper looked up as though about to thank the young man, but there seemed to be a lump in his throat which prevented him from speaking.

Suddenly Mr. Wheatcroft began, explosively, "That's all very well! but what I still don't understand is how Paul got those photographs!"

Mr. Whittier looked at his son and smiled. "That is a little mysterious, Paul," he said, "and I confess I'd like to know how you did it."

"Were you concealed here yourself?" asked Mr. Wheatcroft.

"No," Paul answered. "If you will look round this room you will see that there isn't a dark corner in which anybody could tuck himself."

"Then where was the photographer hidden?" Mr. Wheatcroft inquired, with increasing curiosity.

"In the clock," responded Paul.

"In the clock?" echoed Mr. Wheatcroft, greatly amazed. "Why, there isn't room in the case of that clock for a thin midget, let alone a man!"

Paul enjoyed puzzling his father's partner. "I didn't say I had a man there or a midget either," he explained. "I said that the photographer was in the clock--and I might have said that the clock itself was the photographer."

Mr. Wheatcroft threw up his hands in disgust. "Well," he cried, "if you want to go on mystifying us in this absurd way, go on as long as you like! But your father and I are ent.i.tled to some consideration, I think."

"I'm not mystifying you at all; the clock took the pictures automatically. I'll show you how," Paul returned, getting up from his chair and going to the corner of the office.

Taking a key from his pocket he opened the case of the clock and revealed a small photographic apparatus inside, with the tube of the objective opposite the round gla.s.s panel in the door of the case. At the bottom of the case was a small electrical battery, and on a small shelf over this was an electro-magnet.

"I begin to see how you did it," Mr. Whittier remarked. "I am not an expert in photography, Paul, and I'd like a full explanation. And make it as simple as you can."

"It's a very simple thing indeed," said the son. "One day while I was wondering how we could best catch the man who was getting at the books, that clock happened to strike, and somehow it reminded me that in our photographic society at college we had once suggested that it would be amusing to attach a detective camera to a timepiece and take snapshots every few minutes all through the day. I saw that this clock of ours faced the safe, and that it couldn't be better placed for the purpose.

So when I had thought out my plan, I came over here and pretended that the clock was wrong, and in setting it right I broke off the minute-hand. Then I had a man I know send for it for repairs; he is both an electrician and an expert photographer. Together we worked out this device. Here is a small snap-shot camera loaded with a hundred and fifty films; and here is the electrical attachment which connects with the clock so as to take a photograph every ten minutes from eight in the morning to six at night. We arranged that the magnet should turn the spool of film after every snap-shot."

"Well!" cried Mr. Wheatcroft. "I don't know much about these things, but I read the papers, and I suppose you mean that the clock 'pressed the b.u.t.ton,' and the electricity pulled the string."

"That's it precisely," the young man responded. "Of course I wasn't quite sure how it would work, so I thought I would try it first on a week-day when we were all here. It did work all right, and I made several interesting discoveries. I found that Mike smoked a pipe in this office--and that Bob played leap-frog in the store and stood on his head in the corner there up against the safe!"

"The confounded young rascal!" interrupted Mr. Wheatcroft.

Paul smiled as he continued. "I found also that Mr. Wheatcroft was captivated by a pretty book-agent and bought two bulky volumes he didn't want."

Mr. Wheatcroft looked sheepish for a moment.

"Oh, that's how you knew, is it?" he growled, running his hands impatiently through his shock of hair.

"That's how I knew," Paul replied. "I told you I had an eye on you. It was the lone eye of the camera. And on Sunday it kept watch for us here, winking every ten minutes. From eight o'clock in the morning to three in the afternoon it winked forty-two times, and all it saw was the same scene, the empty corner of the room here, with the safe in the shadow at first and at last in the full light that poured down from the gla.s.s roof over us. But a little after three a man came into the office and made ready to open the safe. At ten minutes past three the clock and the camera took his photograph--in the twinkling of an eye. At twenty minutes past three a second record was made. Before half-past three the man was gone, and the camera winked every ten minutes until six o'clock quite in vain. I came down early this morning and got the roll of negatives. One after another I developed them, disappointed that I had almost counted fifty of them without reward. But the forty-third and the forty-fourth paid for all my trouble."

Mr. Whittier gave his son a look of pride. "That was very ingeniously worked out, Paul; very ingeniously indeed," he said. "If it had not been for your clock here I might have found it difficult to prove that the Major was innocent--especially since he declared himself guilty."

Mr. Wheatcroft rose to his feet, to close the conversation.

"I'm glad we know the truth, anyhow," he a.s.serted, emphatically. And then, as though to relieve the strain on the old book-keeper, he added, with a loud laugh at his own joke, "That clock had its hands before its face all the time--but it kept its eyes open for all that!"

"Don't forget that it had only one eye," said Whittier, joining in the laugh; "it had an eye single to its duty."

"You know the French saying, father," added Paul, "'In the realm of the blind the one-eyed man is king.'"

(1895.)

A CONFIDENTIAL POSTSCRIPT

It was pithily said by one of old that a bore is a man who insists upon talking about himself when you want to talk about yourself. There is some truth in the saying, no doubt; but surely it should not apply to the relation of an author to his readers. So long, at least, as they are holding his book in their hands, it is a fair inference that they do not wish to talk about themselves just that moment; indeed, it is not a violent hypothesis to suggest that perhaps they are then willing enough to have him talk about himself. For the egotistic garrulity of the author there is, in fact, no more fit occasion than in the final pages of his book. At that stage of the game he may fairly enough count on the good humor of his readers, since those who might be dissatisfied with him would all have yielded to discouragement long before the postscript was reached.

The customary preface is not so pleasant a place for a confidential chat as the unconventional postscript. The real value and the true purpose of the preface is to serve as a telephone for the writer of the book and to bear his message to the professional book-reviewers. On the other hand, only truly devoted readers will track the author to his lair in a distant postscript. While it might be presumptuous for him to talk about himself before the unknown and anonymous book-reviewers, he cannot but be rejoiced at the chance of a gossip with his old friends, the gentle readers.

Perhaps the present author cannot drop into conversation more easily than by here venturing upon the expression of a purely personal feeling--his own enjoyment in the weaving of the unsubstantial webs of improbable adventure that fill the preceding pages. With an ironic satisfaction was it that a writer who is not unaccustomed to be called a mere realist here attempted fantasy, even though the results of his effort may reveal invention only and not imagination. It may even be that it was memory (mother of the muses) rather than invention (daughter of necessity) which inspired the 'Primer of Imaginary Geography.' I have an uneasy wonder whether I should ever have gone on this voyage of discovery with Mynheer Vanderdecken, past the Bohemia which is a desert country by the sea, if I had not in my youth been allowed to visit 'A Virtuoso's Collection'; and yet, to the best of my recollection, it was no recalling of Hawthorne's tale, but a casual glance at the Carte du Pays de Tendre in a volume of Moliere, which first set me upon collecting the material for an imaginary geography.

In the second of these little fantasies the midnight wanderer saw certain combats famous in all literature and certain dances. Where it was possible use was made of the actual words of the great authors who had described these combats and these dances, the descriptions being condensed sometimes and sometimes their rhythm being a little modified so that they should not be out of keeping with the more pedestrian prose by which they were accompanied. Thus, as it happens, the dances of little Pearl and of Topsy could be set forth, fortunately, almost in the very phrases of Hawthorne and of Mrs. Stowe, while I was forced to describe as best I could myself the gyrations of the wife who lived in 'A Doll's House' and of her remote predecessor as a "new woman," the daughter of Herodias. The same method was followed in the writing of the third of these tales, although the authors then drawn upon were most of them less well known; and the only quotation of any length was the one from Irving describing the mysterious deeds of the headless horseman.

Now it chanced that the 'Dream-Gown of the j.a.panese Amba.s.sador,'

instead of appearing complete in one number of a magazine, as the two earlier tales had done, was published in various daily newspapers in three instalments. In the first of these divisions the returned traveller fell asleep and saw himself in the crystal ball; in the second he went through the rest of his borrowed adventures; and in the third his friend awakened him and unravelled the mystery. When the second part appeared a clergyman who had read the 'Sketch-Book' (even though he had never heard of the 'Forty Seven Ronins,' or the 'Shah-Nameh,' or the 'Custom of the Country') took his pen and sat down and wrote swiftly to a newspaper, declaring that this instalment of my tale had been "cribbed bodily, and almost _verbatim et literatim_, in one-third of its entire length, from the familiar 'Legend of Sleepy Hollow.'" He asked sarcastically if the copyright notice printed at the head of my story was meant to apply also to the pa.s.sages plagiarized from Irving. He declared also that "it is unfortunate for literary persons of the stamp of the author of 'Vignettes of Manhattan' that there still exist readers who do not forget what they have read that is worth remembering. Such readers are not to be imposed on by the most skilful bunglers (_sic_) who endeavor to pa.s.s off as their own the work of greater men."

The writer of this letter had given his address, Christ Church Rectory, ----, N.J. (I suppress the name of the village for the sake of his parishioners as I suppress the name of the man for the sake of his family). Therefore I wrote to him at once, telling him that if he had read the third and final instalment of my story with the same attention he had given to the second part he would understand why I was expecting to receive from him an apology for the letter he had sent to the newspaper. In time there reached me this inadequate and disingenuous response, hardly worthy to be called even an apology for an apology:

"In reply to your courteous communication, let me say that had I seen the close of your short story, I should have grasped the situation more fully, and should doubtless have refrained from giving it any special attention.

"When one considers, however, the manner in which your copy was published by the paper, deferring the explanation until the appearance of the third instalment, it must be acknowledged that there was opportunity for surprise and criticism. The fault should have been found with the way in which the article was published, rather than with the story itself, that appearing at its conclusion a self-confessed mosaic of quotations. Needless to add that its author's aim to amuse, entertain, and instruct has been manifestly subserved.