The Spectacles of Mr. Cagliostro, Page 2

  “I. I direct that the executor of this will first pay out of my estate all just debts and expenses of administration, as well as necessary funeral expenses and the expenses of any last illness.

  “2. I give, devise and bequeath unto the Mid-West Trust Company of Chicago, a corporation organised and existing under and by virtue of the Laws of the State of Illinois, and having its principal offices in the First National Bank building of the City of Chicago, as trustee, to have and to hold my entire estate for the uses hereinafter expressed, that is to say:

  (a)to invest and re-invest, from time to time, all the cash proceeds of any sales of my real or personal properties constituting my estate, in any bonds or securities of the United States of America or any of the states thereof, or in first mortgages on improved or unimproved real estate situated in the State of Illinois. My trustee shall have full power to vary the investments of this portion of my trust estate, from time to time, for any others of the character above specified; and I do hereby empower my said trustee to manage, protect, control, deal with and dispose of this part of my estate in the way in which I could have managed, cared for, protected, controlled, dealt with or disposed of the same if living.

  (b)to manage, through the employing of efficient officers, the Middleton proprietary remedies, both the producing factory as well as the sales, advertising and purchasing ends; and to distribute and invest the profits of this company.”

  “I beg pardon,” broke in Middleton, “but for how long, may I ask, does that trust company hold control of my estate? And does it mean that I am to have absolutely no say in things — that I am to be a leech, merely receiving the profits? What — ”

  But Lockwood raised one thin, wrinkled hand. “I think Herbert, if you will just give your attention to the entire will, all your questions will be answered.”

  Middleton nodded. “Very well.” But there was now a frown on his face.

  Lockwood bent his attention to the paper once more.

  “3. Since many years ago, when an old friend of mine died leaving behind him many debts, both of a personal and business nature, and his only son proceeded to buckle down and pay each and every one of those obligations of his father, I, Digby Middleton, have had an all consuming desire that I, too, might possess a son who at the expense of his own interests would wash away from his father’s memory, after he was gone, every vestige of personal or business delinquency — a desire to feel that in my son were those same qualities of probity — the honour involved in paying up a father’s debts. Being unfortunately blessed with a superabundance of the world’s goods and a complete deficiency of such things as debts, I cannot leave to my son Herbert, or Jerome Herbert, Middleton, as christened, such a debt of honour as this sort. But to my said son Herbert, or Jerome Herbert, Middleton, I do bequeath — together with such other bequests as are mentioned later in this will — the following debt of honour, a peculiar obligation, to be sure, but one which is in nowise less to be paid than any other, viz.:

  “On Friday, August the 8th, I made a certain wager with Luther Fortescue, my private secretary, to the effect that the ex-German Kaiser would come to America on a lecture tour within thirty days. The conditions of this wager were that the loser was to pay the winner the sum of five hundred dollars cash, and to wear, for the period of one entire year, at all times both inside and outside of the confines of his home, a particular pair of blue goggles of extremely clumsy and old-fashioned shape, possessed among the curios owned by me and known to both myself and to the other party to the wager. If it should so happen that I have lost said wager either before or after my death shall have occurred, and the entire payment thereof has not been made by me, I leave and bequeath to my trustee the duty of paying from my estate the said five hundred dollars constituting the pecuniary element of this wager, and to my beloved son, Herbert Middleton, the duty of paying that part of it concerned with the wearing of the blue goggles. I realise that a son of mine will be only too glad of the opportunity of paying his father’s debts of honour.”

  “Now I say, gentlemen, all of you,” broke in Luther Fortescue, “for heaven’s sake, I never realised that Digby Middleton would take that part of our wager seriously. I simply saw a chance to pick up five hundred dollars in cash from him, realising as I did that such a thing as Wilhelm Hohenzollern coming to these shores could never be; but as for the spectacles — Lord! — I never intended to hold him to that part of the compact. That would be ridiculous.” He turned to Middleton. “Jerry, just ignore this part of this will. It’s really too preposterous. I wouldn’t allow it. I — ”

  “I’m afraid,” broke in Andrew Lockwood grimly, “that it is no longer in your hands, Mr. Fortescue, to say what shall or shall not be done with respect to the late Mr. Middleton’s expressed wishes.” He looked down at the paper again. “But suppose I proceed.”

  The frown of bewilderment between Jerome Middleton’s brows was deepening.

  “If, as mentioned above, it shall be that I shall have lost such wager, I stipulate that the payment of it shall commence at any time before, but not later, than the 90th day after my death, or, if my son’s whereabouts be not known within that length of time after my demise, within 24 hours after this will and its provisions are officially read to him. For the express purpose of my son’s discharging this debt of honour of his father’s, I leave, sealed and in the hands of the Mid-West Trust Company, named as trustee in this will, and holders of this will, the particular pair of spectacles which were agreed upon between Mr. Fortescue and myself should be worn by the loser. They are the spectacles of Joseph Balsamo, who so astounded Europe in the 1790’s under the name of the Count de Cagliostro, and who was said to possess mediumistic and magical powers that transcended explanation.

  “4. I leave behind me with respect to my real estate holdings only the following stipulations which shall be adhered to strictly by my trustee in selling and managing my estate: namely, the following twenty-two residence lots owned by me shall remain unsold so long as my son remains unmarried, and for not less than one year under any circumstances, and that on marriage, if he shall have dissipated other such assets as I have directed that he shall receive, he shall have the choice of any one of these lots as a site for a home for himself and wife. These lots which I direct to be specifically held for his possible choice are situated respectively at 4513 North Lawndale Avenue, 303 Fifty-Fifth Place, 238 Clarkson Court, 938 Wrightwood Avenue, 8720 Longwood Drive, 1750 Crilly Court, 956, Marquett Road, 1666 Walnut Street, 823 Drexel Square, 7519 Margate Terrace, 10, Scott Street — ”

  “I think,” broke in Jerome Middleton in a dry tone, “that you might as well dispense with the naming of the remaining lots, Mr. Lockwood. The streets and numbers of your city mean little or nothing to me.” He bit his lip.

  Lockwood inclined his head. “Very well. The paragraph in question merely enumerates the twenty-two lots, directs that each be fenced in to keep out boys and tramps, and kept intact and unsold for the choice of Mr. Middleton here when he marries, if he so desires.” He continued with the somewhat unusual document:

  “5. My son Jerome Herbert Middleton shall in no manner whatsoever be employed by the Middleton estate, either in the real estate section or by the factory manufacturing the Middleton remedies, in any department thereof, in so far as he is taken care of by the further provisions of this document. He shall, however, have the use of my home on Astor Street for one year free, with two servants to be employed and paid for by my trustee.

  “6. I further direct that if any person named as a legatee or beneficiary in this will, either absolutely or as beneficiary under the trust agreement, shall contest this will, that his interest, legacy, or benefits under and by virtue of this will shall be null and void, and his interest or benefit under this will shall lapse into the estate.

  “7. I direct that Luther Fortescue, my former private secretary, on account of his familiarity with my policies and business affairs, be appointed general manager of the Middleton
estate and properties with appointive power of one private secretary at $10,000 per year, and with a salary of his own amounting to $50,000 per year; and I further direct that he shall not be removable from this office without a court action showing good and sufficient cause therefor.”

  “Egad!” broke in Fortescue at this point, leaning forward, his naturally cold face literally beaming, “does — does that mean — does that mean, Lockwood, that I’m general manager? And at fifty thousand dollars per year?”

  Lockwood nodded slowly. “It means just that. I congratulate you.”

  Fortescue turned in his chair. His face was wreathed in smiles. “Shake hands, Jerry. Shake hands with me. Your father was wiser than any of us. Just as I congratulate you on receiving your profits from this beastly big estate without your having to wiggle a finger to get them, so I want you to congratulate me on my appointment.”

  But Jerome Middleton made no reply. He was, in fact, too taken aback by these directions so succinctly couched in his father’s will. Lockwood — after seeing that Fortescue, silent but jubilant, had lapsed into silence, thumbs in armholes of vest — was preparing to go on with the reading. He flipped the page over, reaching what was obviously the last sheet of the will.

  “8. At the death of my son Herbert, or Jerome Herbert, Middleton, I direct that my trustees pay over my estate to the Seventh Day of Rest Society, incorporated in the State of Illinois, to aid them in their somewhat dubious efforts toward making Sunday the world over a day devoid of work, activity, and amusement.”

  Lockwood looked up. There was a sad look on his face. “The following paragraph concludes the will,” he remarked, “And the paper, by the way, was duly witnessed by the young man and the young woman working in the outer room.”

  “9. To my son Herbert, or Jerome Herbert, Middleton, I direct that my trustees, for the duration of his life, pay to him the sum of seventy-five dollars each and every month.

  “In witness of which nine provisions of my will I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 9th day of August, 1924.

  “DIGBY MIDDLETON.”

  So quickly did the end of the reading of the document come, as Lockwood folded up the carbon copy and laid it to one side on his desk, that it seemed that not one of the three men listening to its terms could have obtained the full realisation of the meaning of the final paragraph. It was Searles, strangely enough, who was the first to come to life.

  “Good God, Lockwood!” he ejaculated in amazement. “Do you mean to tell me he left his boy only seventy-five dollars a month out of a ten-million-dollar estate — an estate which earns three-quarters of a million dollars per year?”

  Lockwood nodded sadly. “I tried — I can’t begin to tell you how much I tried — to get him to change first this provision, and then the figure involved in the provision. But he was firm in his declaration that his Herbie — as I think he called him — would establish, with a start of seventy-five dollars a month, a bigger business than even he had, considering that he had nothing when he started.”

  Searles shook his head dumbly. “Even though I represent the Mid-West Trust Company, the trustee in this case, I declare openly to you all that such a figure is preposterous.” He turned to Jerome Middleton. “Of course, my boy, you’ll have to be technically hired by the corporation at some large figure — ”

  But Fortescue broke in. “That would be nice camouflage,” he said dryly, “but I think if you will recall the terms of that will you will find a paragraph which expressly forbids this. So long as I am to be general manager, I certainly shall do nothing which can be legal cause for my removal.”

  As for Jerome Middleton, he said nothing. He was completely stunned. As from a far-off distance he heard Lockwood speaking to Searles.

  “You brought with you the spectacles of — er — Cagliostro?”

  Searles had taken from his coat pocket a long black glasses-case of very modern shape, but of the capacious kind that might hold a pair of tortoiseshell library spectacles. Across the slit where it would open, opposite to its hinged edge, was a simple red seal holding the cover to the case itself. “You — you refer to this, Lockwood?”

  The old lawyer nodded. He inclined his head toward Jerome Middleton. “This, I am sorry to say, Herbert, is your legacy — the only material part of your father’s entire estate which I can hand to you until you begin to collect your monthly payments of seventy-five dollars each. These — these are the spectacles mentioned in paragraph 3 of your father’s will. You may drop in at the offices of the Mid-West Trust downstairs some later day when you have more leisure, and give them the usual formal receipt for them.” He took them from Searles’ outstretched hand and held them forth to the younger man.

  The latter took them as in a daze. He looked at the shiny cloth-covered case, and then broke the seal in a purely automatic manner. As he raised the lid of the case, there was visible, reposing on the smooth velvet lining, a most unsightly pair of heavy, cumbersome spectacles — the spectacles, plainly, of a bygone century. The lenses in them were oblong instead of being either round, oval or leaf-shaped; and they were of the dark blue glass that people with weak and diseased eyes must at times wear to keep out God’s sun and the daylight. They were not rimless — indeed, they were far from this — for rims they had; but the rims were neither gold, nor silver, nor even brass, but were made of tremendously thick leaden wire, grooved and hammered around the lens so as to hold the glass. A pair of heavy lead bows of the same thick cable-like wire, connected to the outer edges of the lens frames by merely ugly pins of soft lead with spreading legs, served to hook around the wearer’s ears and to be bent to such a point as to fit child, adult or even beast. Mechanically, he took them out and gazed bitterly at them.

  And, case in one hand, leaden spectacles in the other, Jerome Middleton sat, while in the silence of the room a clock ticked like rifle shots in a miniature forest. But of a sudden he turned to Fortescue. “I omitted to congratulate you, Fortescue,” he said cheerlessly, “on your very lucrative appointment which I myself just refused you a while back in the depot. And thanks also for your congratulations to me.” He gazed about him. “Really, gentlemen, a pair of ancient sun-glasses and seventy-five of your dollars every month of my life — out of an estate earning three-quarters of a million of the same dollars every year — I really think the pater handed me a shabby, beggarly sort of a deal. I never dreamed it of him.” His lip curled. “Or does someone here think differently, perhaps?”

  Defiantly, for he was a stranger in a strange land, a newcomer who was thousands of miles from the place which to him had been home, he fastened his attention on each of the other three faces in turn.

  “It is very unfair,” said the little dried-up man who had drawn up the will, after a pause, “but it was his wish.” He paused. “Yes, it was very unfair.” And in his voice was a sincere ring.

  “It was certainly not right to you, his only child,” said the well-appearing man whose institution had received perhaps one of the most lucrative trusts in its history.

  “It wasn’t sporting,” said he who had been appointed general manager for life of the Middleton estate, if he so wished it, at a huge salary. “And from the bottom of my heart I am sorry — devilishly sorry.”

  But only in the third voice was the note of sincerity and sympathy absent.

  CHAPTER III

  THE GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS

  IT was Saturday, shortly after noontime, that Jerome Middleton sat in the library of his father’s former home on Astor Street. Astor Street itself was a narrow little thoroughfare with still narrower green grass plots and extremely dignified residences, a street almost London-like in its lack of any suggestion of the width that characterised the other streets of Chicago. Indeed, the only touch that seemed to connect it with the outs de world was the sight, as one came forth from the doorway of No. 1299, that old residence so long occupied by Digby Middleton himself, of the huge entire side of a brick flat-building west a half-block on Burton Pla
ce, windowless on the side which faced a vacant lot, but on the jet-black background of which screamed forth in emphatic white letters the announcement to the world of the amazing tonic Lotsapep.

  It had been just two days since Jerry Middleton had sat in Lockwood’s office and heard read the will which not only took from him all opportunity of entering this game which to his father had been a real game, but which also cut him off with but a thousandth of the income from his estate. The bitterness that had been in him at first had begun at last to subside, and its subsidence had been, no doubt occasioned by the little letter he had received that morning from Pamela.

  “MY OWN JEROME,

  “By the time this is in your hands, mamma and I will be once more in Chicago, for we shall start almost with the mailing of this. It was with deep regrets, my own boy, that we were not able to travel on with you from San Francisco after having been together for the long thirty days across the Pacific, but as I explained to you on parting, in so far as we were to be married, it would probably be the last time mamma and I would ever get an opportunity of calling upon grand-aunt here in this far Western city. We expect to be in at 10 o’clock Saturday morning and, dear boy, I shall look for you at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. How happy we shall be, shall we not, just you and I?

  “Yours with deep and undying affection,

  “PAMELA.”

  With the letter in his hand, Jerome Middleton sat back in his chair in the quaint old library that had been his father’s, and he fell to thinking about Pamela Martindale.

  He was not in love with Pamela Martindale, but he did not know that he was not in love with her. He had fancied her tremendously from the moment of their first meeting aboard the Polynesian, not knowing of the many like himself who had bowed to the charms of that golden-haired regal being of one of Chicago’s oldest and most aristocratic families.