THE OLD HOUSE REVISITED.
In the month that followed the acquittal of Marcus Wilkeson, three real murders, a railway collision killing thirty persons, and a steamboat explosion almost as tragical in its results, occurred. The Minford affair was already getting old. Public curiosity, except in the immediate neighborhood of the house, no longer exercised itself upon the problem which all of Coroner Bullfast's powers of analysis had failed to solve.
Marcus Wilkeson might have derived a selfish consolation from the fact that other mysteries and calamities were causing his name, which last month was on the tongue of the whole town, to be forgotten. But he had a nobler and truer source of consolation in his dear books. In the presence of the philosophers, and sages, and historians, and novelists, and poets, and wits, the men of genius of the past, chroniclers of the loss of empires, grave men who taught the vanity of life, and funny men who taught the same lesson in a different way, Marcus felt his pack of sorrows considerably lightening. His first, last, only disappointment in love had subsided into a gentle and not disagreeable melancholy. His trial, and the dreadful notoriety which his name had acquired, had imparted to his mild nature a gentle tinge of cynicism, which improved him.
Marcus was sitting, one morning, in the little back parlor, idly turning over the leaves of an old folio, and looking with a half eye through the closed window at the houses opposite, and thinking what a deal of trouble it was possible to extract from a single block of buildings, when a slight rap was heard at the door. Simultaneously, the door was pushed open, and Wesley Tiffles shot in.
He had brought all his tonical properties with him. Good nature and cheerfulness effervesced from his face. Through the trial, and since the acquittal, Wesley Tiffles had stuck to Marcus. Twice, often three times a day, he called, and was always welcomed by Marcus, and not inhospitably received by Miss Philomela Wilkeson. The interviews between that lady and the romantic speculator usually took place, quite by accident, in the entry, on the arrival or the departure of Mr. Tiffles; but, as it happened, not with the cognizance of Marcus.
On one occasion--at the edge of evening--Marcus went into the entry a few minutes after Tiffles had left the room, and saw that gentleman and Philomela standing in the doorway. Tiffles appeared to be in the act of raising the lady's hand to kiss it; but, if that were his intention, he abandoned it on seeing Marcus, and shook the attenuated fingers instead. Then he coughed, and, saying "Good-night," went down the steps, as if he had not seen Marcus in the gloom. Miss Wilkeson coughed also (why do people always cough?), and, turning to her approaching brother, said it was a cool night, which was not true, as the night was agreeably warm. Marcus had never afterward seen them together, and had forgotten this slightly mysterious circumstance. Wesley Tiffles had, as usual, something enlivening to tell.
"Got the funniest piece of news for you, my dear fellow!" said he.
"Anything funny is always welcome, Tiffles," said he, closing his folio, that he might not appear to obstruct his friend's jocosity.
"I've heard from that infernal old panorama--when I say infernal, of course I don't mean to imply that it wasn't a splendid idea, if I had had capital enough to see it through--and what do you s'pose the landlord and the other creditor have done with it? You couldn't guess in a month."
"Well, what?" asked Marcus Wilkeson, laughing in anticipation.
"Ha! ha! cut it up, and sold it for window curtains. A friend of mine, who passed through there the other day, says there's a picture of a lion, or a palm tree, or a slice of a desert--principally desert--hung up in every other window. And the best of it is, that they made a good thing of it. The curtains brought at least twice what I owed them. Great heavens! why didn't I think of it myself?"
"Of what?"
"Why, to cut up the panorama into window curtains, when Patching had finished it, and--ha! ha!--peddle them through the country. By Jupiter! that speculation may be worth trying yet. But at present I have my new patent process for----"
Marcus coughed, and opened the book. Tiffles accepted the delicate hint in a spirit of true friendship, and let his new patent process drop.
"Marcus," said he, "I don't wish to revive an unpleasant subject; but have you no idea what the late Mr. Minford was trying to invent?"
"Not the least. I never trouble myself about inventions, as you well know, who are full of them. Besides, poor Mr. Minford was not communicative on that subject. He kept the secret even from his daughter."
"You have a claim on the apparatus, whatever it is."
"Yes. Mr. Minford insisted on giving me a paper to that effect, as security for two loans of five hundred dollars each. I took it to please the old gentleman." Marcus felt like groaning, as he thought of the sorrows that he had derived from his connection with the Minford family; but he had just been reading of the consolations of philosophy, and he stifled the rising weakness.
"I have thought, Marcus, that there might be something about that unfinished machine that could be patented for the benefit of Miss Minford. You know I am a good judge of patentable things."
"What do you propose, then?" asked Marcus, concealing, with an effort, the emotions which the mention of Miss Minford always caused."
"That we go to the house together. The legal claim which you hold upon the machine entitles you to see it, if only to ascertain that it has not been stolen."
"The visit you propose is a disagreeable one; but if you think there is a possibility of benefiting Miss Minford, I will go. Not that she is likely to be in want, however, at present, for I understand that a wealthy lady, Mrs. Crull, who befriended her at the inquest, you remember, has taken her to her own house."
Without further words--for Marcus retained his old business habit of forming his conclusions suddenly, and adhering to them--the friends proceeded to the late residence of Mr. Minford.
Marcus had not yet philosophically conquered his dread of recognition in the street as the man who had been suspected of a murder. He buttoned his overcoat up to his chin, pulled his hat over his brow, and walked fast. As he had purposely altered his style of dress since the inquest, he was not readily identified. But he was sympathetically conscious that several persons whom he passed, and who glanced at him, knew him, and that he was pointed out to others when his back was turned.
Reaching the house, they hurried up stairs, hoping to run the gauntlet of the three floors in safety. Luckily, there had been a general move from the premises--the lodgings being less desirable since the supposed murder. The faces which thrust themselves out of the doorways as the two visitors passed, were strange ones.
Marcus felt his heart palpitating, and his face growing pale, as they ascended the last flight of stairs, at the head of which were the room and the mystery. The lodgings had not been taken. The rent had been paid by Mr. Minford up to the 1st of May; and no person had been sufficiently charmed with the apartments to hire them since that date.
Upon the door was a placard, announcing that the key could be obtained by application to the floor below. Tiffles went for it, and returned accompanied by an old woman, who looked as if she knew a great deal which she did not care to tell. She had been requested by the landlord to show the apartments to applicants, but not to whisper a word about the murder; and she was almost bursting with her great secret. While the old woman was wondering how much longer she would be able to hold in, Marcus and Tiffles entered the front room, and quietly closed the door in her face. The old woman grumbled at this discourtesy but, as she had a superstitious objection to putting her foot in a room where a murder had been committed, she leaned against the banisters of the stairs, and waited for the visitors' reappearance.
The room looked just as it did on the day of the inquest. The faded and worn furniture was all there; the yellow curtains still covered the windows; the clock still hung against the wall, tickless. Marcus's eyes glanced restlessly about the room for a moment, not daring to look at the spot where the old man had received his death blow. But an inevitable magnetism soon brought his eyes to it, and his heart was lightened as he saw that the blood stains had been carefully wiped out.
The door of the adjoining room--the maiden's bedchamber--was ajar. Marcus pushed it open with that slow motion which is a token of delicacy and respect. The general appearance of the room was unchanged, as well as Marcus could recollect from the occasional glimpses of it which he had formerly stolen. The little row of dresses which hung on pegs in a corner, and a few simple ornaments, might have been removed, but nothing more. Marcus felt that he was intruding here, and he closed the door.
In the mean time, Wesley Tiffles had been examining the mysterious machine, which stood undisturbed in its corner, with the protecting screen still standing before it. Tiffles had first wiped off the dust, and then looked into it, and through it, and over it, and under it, with an eye that was predetermined to pry out a secret. Then he felt of every wheel, lever, cam, ratchet, drum, and other portion within reach of his fingers. Everything was immovable. Then he stood aloof from the machine, folded his arms, pursed up his lips, and cocked an eye at it, as if, by the mere force of intellect, he would compel the dumb thing to give up its mystery.
As Tiffles was applying this species of exorcism in vain, Marcus came to his assistance.
"What on earth can it be?" exclaimed Tiffles. "Not a new kind of steam engine; or an electrical apparatus; or a clock; or a sewing machine; or anything for spinning, carding, or weaving--nothing that is adapted to any useful labor. These heavy weights, that have fallen on the floor, would give the works a kind of jerky motion for a few seconds, while the weights were descending. Nothing more. But the ultimate purpose of the machine is a puzzler."
"Mr. Minford always said that it was something that would revolutionize the world of industry--that it was a new mechanical principle of universal application."
Tiffles laughed a little. "Excuse my levity," said he, "but inventors--and I am one of them, you know--always claim that they are about to revolutionize the world of industry. I never knew one of them to claim less than that for a patent flytrap or an improved sausage stuffer. Mr. Minford was a man of genius, I dare say, but he probably overestimated the importance of his invention. Have you any objection to my prying the thing apart at this opening? I want to inspect some of the works that are partly concealed. I pledge myself to put it together again as good as new."