Beadle's Dime Library No. 146 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The leather medicine-case contained a quan- tity of little vials, more or less filled with medicine. ' ‘‘ Which one of these is it?’ ‘¢The square one.” The masked man had selected this as contain- ing the arg. because it was such a strange, odd- shaped bottle, and so entirely different from all the others in the case, fi Pog is the one?” ‘and he held it up. ‘It is.’ The chief then examined the contents of the bottle with a great deal of curiosity, as did also the other two. Apparently it -only contained a small quan- tity of salt, about as much as would lie on the small blade of a common pen-knife. The chief uncorked the bottle and smelt of it, but there was absolutely no scent to it. ‘‘ This is a humbug—nothing but salt.” “Tt is to be dissolved in water and then ** All of it dissolved?” **T cannot tell that, although the captain told me that the native who gave it to him said there was enough poison in the vial to kill a dozen men.” **T doubt it!” exclaimed the chief. ‘It isa bumbug!” Then he poured a little of the stuff out in his hand and applied his tongue to it much to the wonder of his associates, who would not have risked the test for a good sum of money. ** It is not salt,” he said, taking t care to spit out the stuff after tasting it; “it has an acrid, bitter taste, but I doubt very much if there is any virtue in it. I have heard these tales of the India poisons before, but I never met anybody who really knew anything about them. But, if you want to experiment on your- self, I don’t see any objection, do you, gentle men?’ and he appealed to the two other shrouded men. They shook their heads in the negative. ‘‘ A glass ef water for our esteemed friend, then.” The water was brought. ** Shall I pour the whole of this precious mix- ture inte the 9” ** Tf you will be so kind.” The prisoner could not be more polite if the masked man had been his bosom friend instead of his exeautioner. The salt-like substance disselved almost in- stantly and left no trace whatever of its being; the water was as pure as though it had not been tampered with. ‘* By Jove!” the white chief muttered, ‘‘ if this stuff is good for anything what a terrible wea- pon it would be; but I do not credit it. Lf there was anything in it, the Buropeans would have wrung the secret from the natives long ago, Well, are you ready?” he asked, turning to the captive. ‘Quite ready.” The chief held the gems to the lips of the prisoner and he drained it dry. ‘** Any taste?” curiously queried the mask. ** None in the least.” ** And the effect?” **T do not feel hen ‘‘Bah! I knew that it was a humbug!” but for all the repeated declaration the disguised man looked at the captive in a way which seemed to imply that he was not so certain of this point as he pretended to be. ‘*T begin to feel a slight sensation of drowsi- ness now,” the prisoner remarked, ‘‘ If it is like other poisons, and there was .en- ough in the vial to kill a dozen men, you have an over-dose and it may not produce the desired effect,” the chief suggested. ‘*That holds with certain drags oe : with others the greater the quantity taken the quicker and more certain the death.” * Well, this is certainly not a very quick one. ‘** No, so it is said, and therefore is it so dan gerous—so desirable a weapon in the hands of one who desires to strike down a foe and yet does not wish to have bis agency in the matter suspected. It produces sleep, temporary in- sensibility, followed by total, and it leaves ab- solutely no trace behind by the aid of which science can detect the cause of death.” “‘How you will bother the medical men, then, when they commence to operate on you!’ the chief observed, with a chuckle. ‘‘ They will slice you open, examine your interior and then throw up their hands with wonder. ‘Of what : disease did this man die? they willery. ‘He is in ore ag health; no signs of violence, and ought, in the course of Nature, to have lived thirty or forty years more.’ Why, it will be a ten days’ wonder!” The captive surveyed the speaker with calm attention as he uttered this brutal speech; was this man a demon thus to gloat over his victim? and then, in the heart of the doctor swelled a wild desire; he prayed that the hand of Provi- dence might interpose and in some miraculous way aid him to escape from the seemingly cer- tain death that threatened, so that he might take upon himself the ré/e of an avenger. He ‘vowed that, if Heaven answered the prayer, be would devote ali the rest of his life pee down and exterminating every member of { The Doctor Detective. 5 mysterious White Band from the potent, pow- erful chief down to the humblest follower. sndaasd” car eemaad FERS aTe can't’ walt course to follow, and that was to save ever here all night for the drug to operate, but down | cent he possibly could until he had enough capi- in bg tana os will “4 all my _— ng: no on | — a the ey hex Sf will disturb you and you wi able to wa | e must have some comfo ep slee the workings of this mysterious stuff from ‘far- in the wintertime. In the summer he could at ther Ind’ with care and attention—that is, if it —— rw feta 2a but to expose himself to the coms work, which I are B Rhos 76 going | > of a death would upset his own some distance. is hole was dug for a | golden dream altogether. well but after going down fifty feet without | Inthe rear of the old building was a diminu- se i be po the parties got at their ae aan ae 4 _— oe em ed vee . an ve it up, so you see you will have a tom e side of the house once admi g which cannot find its fellow. To work, gentle the cellar, but the glass had vanished long ago, a man who now counts his gains by thousands commenced in just such a small way. So, to gain his object the boy knew of but one men.” and a board had been roughly nailed up to close Unresistingly the doctor suffered himself to | the hole; as the cellar was not used, light was be placed in the golden coffin, the lid, which | not wanted. was so heavy that it took the combined strength Hoppergrass had forced the board away and of the three men to lift it, was putin its place. | had explored the cellar. As it had happened No need to fasten it down, for no person con- | the shed which had been built for the inmates fined within the narrow limits could have | of the house to store their wood and coal in budged. was placed almost directly in front of this old Then by means of a skillful arrangement of | window, and there was a narrow way, left by pulleys and ropes, the massive weight was low- | the carelessness of the carpenters who con- ered into the deep well-hole. Down—down it | structed the shed, between it and the fence went into the region of eternal night. which separated this yard from the next one The man was buried alive, and the task was | and this passage, which led directly to the win- as completely performed as though so many | dow. " feet of solid earth, instead of air, rested upon After wry the discovery that there was a the golden coffin. cellar under the house, and that it would an- swer for a lodging-place, the boy replaced the CHAPTER V. board carefully and was very icnlar never HOPPERGRASS IS PUZZLED. _ to go near the spot in the daytime. The secret AFTER ing with the doctor the boy had | was too valuable to share it with any one. meditated for a few minutes over the situation. There were always plenty of “‘ bummers” hang- ing around the aarenpostiien. drunken, home- less wretches who would have been only teo glad to get into such a capital sleeping-place, and the boy well knew that, if the existence of lace was discovered some one of these en ruffians would be sure to dispossess *’Spect I better go to roost,” he said, after thinking about the matter. ‘‘I can’t do the any good by loafin’ around the entry all night, and if she should happen to want me she knows where to find me. Bot where in thunder did | the she raise all that money? Why, she had a | dru hunk of bills as big as my fist—must have been | hi most a hundred dollars there, and I know that she give me the last ten cents that she had fer medicine jest afore I went after the Doc. Well, it jest beats me, that’s what it does.” The boy shook his head in a solemn manner as he marched off to his ‘‘ roost.” In the great city are many strange habita- tions—many odd sleeping-places, but is is safe to assert that, search the metropolis over, from the Battery to Harlem river, a more singular bedchamber than that occupied by the boy could not have been found. Into the solid wall of dirt that filled up the The old rookery in which the mother and | opening the boy had tunneled, working at night daughter resided was no modern-built tene- | by candle-light, and taking particular care to ment-house; on the contrary it was a dilapi- | be as quiet asa mouse in the operation. He oe 3 dated old wooden building, two story and an | out a little sort of cave, the bottom of whic attic high, whieh, in all probability, was a hun- | was about a yard higher than the level of the dred years old; at any rate, so old that no one | cellar, which in the time of heavy rains — in the neighborhood could tell when it had been | become wet, and therefore very unpleasant for erected, _ him once in awhile. Under the house was a cavity, about six feet | The passage, which was about a yard “— deep, which had once been a cellar, but that | and wide by two yards long, he filled complete was long ago. The stairs leading down into it | with straw, carrying it in by night in sm had been appropriated by poverty-stricken | quantities, and when the winter blasts blew tenants for firewood, and the agent then hadthe | keen the boy would crawl] into his snug hole, cellar entrance boarded up, and so the cellar, | curl himself up in his straw@nd sleep as warm like the history of the house, vanished into the | as toast. darkness of obscurity. The idea was a great success, and the lad But the street rat, resembling his prototype | envied no one on earth when it came to sleeping of the sewer, was keen on the scent, and in | accommodations; as a general rule, ten minutes some mysterious way he got an idea that there | after he was in his cubby-hole, he was in the was a sort of cellar under the building, and when | arms of Morpheus, but on this night he did not winter came on and the nights became too cold | fall asleep as usual. The—to —enormous to allow him to sleep with comfort in his usual | roll of bills which the girl took from her bosom resorts, the old wagons standing in the streets— | astonished him, and he could not understand in the empty coal box of the Dutch groceryman | the least where she could have obtained the at the corner—the rear entryway of some tene- | money, knowing as he did that,*since hor ment-house, where he was not likely to be dis- | mother’s illness, and her inability to do much turbed by inquisitive and meddling “cops,” | work on account of attending to her mother, the young gamin set out to find some more com- | she had pawned everything she had upon fortable ** b a which the pawnbroker would advance any True, there was the five-cent lodging-house | money in order to procure food and medicine. down-town expressly for the accommodation ‘*A hundred dollars,” he muttered, dreamily, of all such homeless lads, but five cents to Hop- | as he closed his eyes at last; ‘‘mebbe more’n a pergrass was quite a large sum of money, mul- | hundred, mebbe a thousand. Gosh! what a plied by seven it made thirty-five, and thirty- | hunk!” five multiplied by fifty-two was eighteen dol- At last sleep came, and in bis sleep he dreamed lars and twenty cents; and so, in one year’s | of the wealth which the girl had so unexpectedly time, by saving the price of a lodging, and put- | displayed. ting the money in the bank, he would have e was up bright and early in the morning, enough to buy a stationary news-stand, one of | for in the ne r line, more than any other those crosses between a small house and a bi tape the truth of the sa me. Yap oh early box, which, by the kindness of a storekeeper, ird catches the worm isrealized. — permitted to occupy an eligible position on the | He had made up his mind that it was too sidewalk. In such a shanty there could be a | early for him to call upon Miss Eldon, as she small stove, a bunk under the counter, and thus | would not probably like to be distu r real, solid comfort could be enjoyed. To be the | the grief and toil which she had lately encoun- sole proprietor of snch an elaborate establisb- | te but, as he passed through the en y ment was the great desire of the boy’s heart, | of the house he was naj wg to see the door of and, young as he was, he had already learned | the apartment, which the girl and her mother the truth, which the majority of m nd live | occupied, wide cron and Mulearthy, the and die without knowing—that it is not what | Celtic lady who ved te, standing in tle sy Seal gee at . but the living 1 t of satisfaction e li and the dead mother were ‘gone! a ‘‘ Hello, where’s the gal and the woman?” the boy exclaimed, in astonishment. — *“They’re gone.” _ “Gone where?” “How should I know? Do ye think that the The secret, though, was not betrayed, for no one was likely to squeeze between the shed and the fence to examine the side of the house unless he, Hoppergrass, was noticed taking that road; hence the boy was very careful on this score. In the cellar he had arranged a most excellent ‘‘roosting-place.” There was a break in the tone foundation in the rear of the cellar, evi- a built for the purpose of affording a rear pas- sage, but the design had never been carried out you get, but the sum you save, that makes wealth in this world. The idea of the ‘ dog-house,” as the boy com- monly termed the newspaper shanty aforesaid, realized, a newspaper route and an assortment of candies for the young patrons, and tobacco and cigars for the older ones, could easily be added, and then the high road to fortune would reached. | likes of me would be after inquiring into the Smile not, reader, at the day-dream of the vate business of me neighbors? I’m a lady lad, nor look upon it as an idle iresut, for many ' I'll have ye to know, an’ I allers demane m \ | GOMIIGEDOOKS dently left at the time whon the house was | (e(o}