The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton

by Wardon Allan Curtis

“Young man,” said the emir, sternly, “a bullet can outstrip your fleetest footsteps. There may never be but one occasion when you will need a weapon, but on that occasion the possession of the means of protection may spell the difference between life and life.”

Hardly had he uttered them, before Mr. Middleton regretted his forward and pert words, for never before had he answered the emir lightly, such was his respect for him as a man of goodly parts and as one set in authority, and such was his gratitude toward him as a benefactor. Stammering forth what was at once an apology and an acknowledgement of the wisdom of what the emir had said, Mr. Middleton began to make preparations to go. But Prince Achmed bade him wait, and saying a few words to Mesrour in the Arabic language, the blackamore brought to him a pair of pistols of a formidable aspect. In sooth, one could hardly tell whether they ought to be called pistols, or culverins. In the shape of the stocks alone could anyone detect that they were pistols. The bore of each was more than an inch in diameter, and the octagonal barrels of thick steel, heavily inlaid with silver, were a foot and a half long. The handles, which were in proportion to the barrels and so long that four hands could grasp them, were so completely covered with an inlay of pearl that no wood was visible. Taking one of them, the emir rammed home a great load of powder, upon which he placed a handful of balls as large as marbles. Having served the second likewise, he handed the pair to Mr. Middleton.

“Take them. Protected by them, you need have little fear. But woe betide the man who stands in front of them, for so wide is the distribution of their charge, that he must be a most indifferent marksman who could not do execution with them.”

Thanking the emir for the gift and the entertainment and instruction of his discourse, Mr. Middleton departed. Impressed though he had been by Prince Achmed’s counsel and by the lesson to be derived from the recital of the experiences of Dr. McDill, Mr. Middleton did not carry the pistols as he went about his daily vocation. It was impossible to so bestow them about his garments that they did not cause large and unsightly protuberances and to carry them openly was not to be thought of. Their weight, too, was so great that it was burdensome to carry them in any manner. Coming into his room unexpectedly in the middle of the forenoon of the Thursday following the acquisition of the weapons, he surprised Hilda Svenson, maid of all work, in the act of examining one of them, which she had extracted from the place where they lay concealed in the lower bureau drawer beneath a pile of underclothing. With a start of guilty surprise, Hilda let the pistol fall to the floor. Fortunately it did not go off, but nonetheless was he convinced that he ought to dispose of the two weapons, for any day Hilda might shoot herself with one, while on the weekly sheet changing day, Mrs. Leschinger, the landlady, might shoot herself with the other. There was no place in the room where he could conceal them from the painstaking investigations of Hilda and Mrs. Leschinger, and the expedient of extracting the charges not occurring to him, he felt that it was clearly his duty to remove the lives of the two women from jeopardy by disposing of the pistols. He was in truth pained at the necessity of parting with the gifts which the emir had made with such solicitude for his welfare and as some assuagement to this regret he sought to dispose of them as profitably as possible. With this end in view, he made an appointment for a private audience after hours with Mr. Sidney Kuppenheimer, who conducted a large loan bank on Madison Street and was reputed a connoisseur and admirer of all kinds of curios.

On the evening for which he had made the appointment, he set forth, intending to make an early and short call upon his friend Chauncy Stackelberg and wife, before repairing to Mr. Kuppenheimer’s place of business. But such was the engaging quality of the conversation of the newly married couple, abounding both in humor and good sense, and so interested was he in hearing of the haps and mishaps of married life, a state he hoped to enter as soon as fortune and the young lady of Englewood should be propitious, that he was unaware of the flight of time until in the midst of a pause in the conversation, he heard the cathedral clock Mrs. Stackelberg’s uncle had given her as a wedding present, solemnly tolling the hour of eleven. The hour Mr. Kuppenheimer had named was one hour agone. To have kept the appointment, he should have started two hours before.

Another half hour had flown before Mr. Middleton, having paused to partake of some chow-chow recently made by Mrs. Stackelberg and highly recommended by her liege, finally left the house, carrying a pistol in either hand. The night was somewhat cloudy, but although there was neither moon nor stars, it was much lighter than on some nights when all the minor luminaries are ablaze, or the moon itself is aloft, shining in its first or last quarter, a phenomenon remarked upon by an able Italian scientist in the middle of the last century and by him attributed to some luminous quality that inheres in the clouds themselves. Mr. Middleton was walking along engrossed in thoughts of the scene of domestic bliss he had lately quitted and in dreams of the even more delightful home he hoped to some day enjoy with the young lady of Englewood, when he suddenly became cognizant of four individuals a short distance away, comporting themselves in an unusual and peculiar manner. Cautiously approaching them as quietly as possible, he perceived that it was two robbers despoiling two citizens of their valuables, one pair standing in the middle of the street, one on the sidewalk, the citizens with their hands elevated above their heads in a strained and uncomfortable attitude, while each robber—with back to him—was pointing a revolver with one hand and turning pockets inside out with the other.

With a resolution and celerity that astonished him, as he afterwards dwelt upon it in retrospect, Mr. Middleton rushed silently upon the nearest robber, him in the street, and dealt him a terrible blow upon the head with the barrel of a pistol. Without a sound, the robber sank to the earth, whereupon the citizen, whether he had lost his head through fear, or thought Mr. Middleton a new and more dangerous outlaw, fled away like the wind. Snatching the bag of valuables in the unconscious thief’s hands, Mr. Middleton made toward the other robber, who, to his astonishment, hissed without looking around:

“What did you let your man get away for, you fool? Try and make yourself useful somehow. Hold this swag and cover the man, so I can have both hands and get through quick.”

Taking the valuables the robber handed him, Mr. Middleton with calmness and deliberation placed them in his pockets, after which he placed a muzzle of a pistol in the back of the robber’s neck and sharply commanded:

“Hands up!”