Part 22

"Now," said Mr. Middleton, addressing the unconscious form of Augustus Brockelsby, "now there will be no chance of you appearing in court in the case of Ralston versus Hippenmeyer. I will not restore you until it is all over. I will now have the long coveted opportunity to plead an important case and as I have studied it so carefully, I shall win. There will now be no chance that poor little Hippenmeyer will suffer from your disgraceful and bestial habits, for in spite of the best that could be done for you, you would be in no fit condition to plead a case this afternoon. And when I bring you to at fall of night, you will think you have been drunk all day. But where will I keep you in the meantime?"

This was a most perplexing problem. There were no closets in the suite of offices. There were no boxes, no desks big enough to conceal a man and Mr. Middleton's brow was beginning to contract as he struggled with the problem, when suddenly the stillness of the room was disturbed by some one smiting the door. Not a sound made he, for his heart had stopped beating as completely as Brockelsby's. What should he do, what should he do? The paralysis of fear answered for him and supplied the best present plan and he did nothing. Then came a voice, a voice calling him by name, the voice of Chauncy Stackelberg.

"Open up, old man, open up. I know you are there, for I heard you knocking around before I rapped and you dropped your handkerchief outside the door. Open up, or I'll shin right over the transom, for I must see you," and still preserving silence, Mr. Middleton heard a sound as of a man essaying to stand on the door knob and grasp the transom above. He rushed to the door, unlocked it, and opening it just enough to squeeze through, shut it behind him and thrust the key in the lock.

"Keep still, keep still. You'll wake the old man. I can't let you in."

"Was that him, slumped down in the chair? Must be tired to sleep in that position. Say, old chap, you were my best man, and now I want you again."

"Want me to draw up papers for a divorce?" said Mr. Middleton, gloomily. How was he going to get rid of this inopportune fellow?

"Shut up," said Chauncy Stackelberg. "It's a boy, and I want you to come up to the christening next Sunday and be godfather. You don't know how happy I am. Say, come on down and get a drink."

Ten minutes before, Mr. Middleton had been convinced that drink was a very great curse, but he accepted this invitation with alacrity, naming a saloon two blocks away as the one he considered best in that vicinity. He surmised that the happy father would hardly offer to come back with him from such a distance, and the surmise was correct. As he reascended to the office, with him in the elevator were two gentlemen, one of whom he recognized as Dr. Angus McAllyn, a celebrated surgeon who had two or three times come to the office to see Mr. Brockelsby and the other as Dr. Lucius Darst, a young eye and ear specialist who within the space of but a few days had established his office in the building. To neither of these gentlemen, however, was Mr. Middleton known.

"I want you to get off on this floor with me," said Dr. McAllyn to his medical confrere. "I may want your assistance a bit. You see," he went on, as they got out of the elevator and started down the corridor with Mr. Middleton just behind, "we had a banquet last night of the Society of Andrew Jackson's Wars, and my friend Brockelsby got too much aboard. He was turned over to me to take to his home, but just as we were leaving, I received an urgent call. So the best I could do was to drive by here and start him toward his office and go on. He could navigate after a fashion and doubtless spent the night all right in his office, and I would take no farther trouble with him but for the fact that he has an important case to-day. So I want to fix him up, and as I haven't much time, you can be of service to me."

"Ah, ha," said Mr. Middleton to himself, "I'll just lie low until they have given up trying to get in and have gone."

But they did not go away. To his consternation, they opened the door and walked in, for though he had put the key in the lock when he had closed the door behind him to parley with Chauncy Stackelberg, he had walked away without turning it! They would find Mr. Brockelsby! Great though Dr. McAllyn was, he would hardly be likely to recognize a condition of suspended animation. Unless Mr. Middleton confessed, there was danger that the famous forensic orator would be buried alive. And if he confessed, what would the consequences be to himself? The fact that in whatever event he would lose his place and be a marked and disgraced man, was the very least thing to consider. He was threatened with far more serious dangers than that. First, there would be the vengeance the law would take upon him for meddling with and tampering with medical matters. But even if he had been a physician, would the medical faculty look otherwise than with horror upon this rash and wanton experimenting with the strange and unholy practices of India? Even a medical man would be arrested for malpractice and for depriving a fellow being of the use of his faculties. The penitentiary stared him in the face.

He could not endure not to know what was taking place within. He must have knowledge of everything in order to know what moves to make and when to make them. He let himself through the outer door of Mr. Brockman's private office, and by taking a position by the door communicating between this office and the main office, he could hear everything in safety.

"Shall I send for an undertaker?" asked Dr. Darst.

At these chilling words, Mr. Middleton was about to open the private office door and rush in and confess all. He had begun to place the key in the lock, when a joyful thought stayed his hand. Let them bury Mr. Brockelsby. He would dig him up. He laughed noiselessly in his intense relief. But hark, what does he hear?

"Darst, this is an unusual case."

"Yes?" said Dr. Darst mildly.

"A strange, a remarkable case. Darst, if we do not examine this case, we are traitors to science. Darst, we must take him to the medical school. When we are through, we'll sew him all again and bring him back here, or leave him almost any place where he can be found easily. He will be just as good to bury then as now, nobody hurt, and the cause of science advanced. Observe, Darst, dead, absolutely dead, yet with no rigor mortis. Dead, and yet as if he slept. If need be, we will pursue to the inmost recesses of his being the secret of his demise."

Mr. Middleton was nigh to falling to the floor. The succession of hope and fear had taken from him all resolution. Of what use would it be to exhume Mr. Brockelsby after the doctors had cut him up? The impulse to rush in and confess had spent itself and he was now cravenly drifting with the tide. All judgment, all power of reflection had departed from him. He was now only a pitiable wretch with scarcely strength to stand by the door and listen, unable to originate any thought, any action.

"How are you going to get him out of here?" asked Dr. Darst.

"In a box. You don't suppose I'd carry him down and put him in a hack?"

"But suppose they get to looking for him? It is known that he came here. A box goes out of here to be taken to the medical school, a long box that might hold a man. You and I are the ones who hire the men who carry the box."

"Who said a long box that might hold a man? It will be a short, rather tall box, packing-case shape. Remember, he is as limber as you are and can be accommodated to any position. He will be put in it sitting bolt upright. It will be only half the length of a man, with nothing in its shape to suggest that it might hold a man. Who said take it to the medical school from here? I hire a drayman to take a box to the Union Depot. He dumps it there on the sidewalk near the places for in-going and out-going baggage. Ostensibly going to carry it as excess baggage. We fiddle around until he goes, then call up some other drayman in the crowd hanging about and take a box just arrived from Milwaukee, St. Paul, any place the drayman wants to think, out to the college. As for the inquiry that will be made concerning the whereabouts of Brockelsby, rest easy on that point. He frequently goes off on sprees of several days' duration and his absence from home is of such common occurrence that his wife won't begin to hunt him up until we are through with him and have got him back here, or have dumped him in front of some building with his neck broken, showing that he fell out of some story above."

All this Mr. Middleton heard as he leaned against the door jamb, swallowing, swallowing, with never a thing in his mouth since the night before, yet swallowing. He heard Dr. Darst go after a box. He heard men deposit it in the corridor outside. He heard the two doctors take it in when the men had gone. He heard it go heavily out into the corridor again after a long interval. He heard more men come, come to carry it away, and he pulled himself together with a supreme effort and followed. He saw the box loaded on a dray. With his eye constantly on it, he threaded his way through the crowd on the sidewalk, followed it on its way across the river to the Union Depot. With never a hope in his heart that anything could possibly occur to save him from a final confession and its consequences, humanlike postponing the evil hour as long as he could.

The box was dumped upon the sidewalk before the depot. The two medical men stood leaning upon it, waiting for the drayman to depart. The evil moment had arrived. Once away from the depot, in the less congested streets in the direction of the medical college, the dray would go too fast for him to follow. He approached. He must speak now. No, no. He need not follow the dray. That was not necessary. He could get to the medical school before they could have time to do injury to Mr. Brockelsby. It would be safe to let the box get out of his sight for that little time. He would tell at the medical college.

"Yes, as soon as we get him there," said Dr. McAllyn, "we'll put him in the pickle."

Mr. Middleton sprang forward and put an appealing hand upon the shoulder of either doctor. With a sudden start that caused him to start in turn, each wheeled about. For a moment, he could say nothing and stood with palsied lips while they gave back his stare. Gave back his stare? All at once his mouth came open and these were the words he heard issue forth:

"Sirs, I arrest you for stealing the body of Mr. Augustus Alfonso Brockelsby, attorney-at-law."

He who had just now been an abject, grovelling wretch, was of a sudden come to be a lord among men. The practitioners making no reply, he continued: