The Water Ghost and Others by John Kendrick Bangs (good novels to read in english .txt) 📖

of which I was so proud, had in some manner changed, and was now of the same aggressive hue as was that of my visitor, red even as a brick is red. To grasp it firmly in my hands and tear it from my neck was the work of a moment, and then in a spirit of rage I turned upon my companion.

"See here," I cried, "I've had quite enough of you. I can't make you out, and I can't say that I want to. You know where the door is--you will oblige me by putting it to its proper use."

"Sit down, Hiram," said he, "and don't be foolish and ungrateful. You are behaving in a most extraordinary fashion, destroying your clothing and acting like a madman generally. What was the use of ripping up a handsome tie like that?"

"I despise loud hues. Red is a jockey's color," I answered.

"But you did not destroy the red tie," said he, with a smile. "You tore up your blue one--look. There it is on the floor. The red one you still have on."

Investigation showed the truth of my visitor's assertion. That flaunting streamer of anarchy still made my neck infamous, and before me on the floor, an almost unrecognizable mass of shreds, lay my cherished cerulean tie. The revelation stunned me; tears came into my eyes, and trickling down over my cheeks, fairly hissed with the feverish heat of my flesh. My muscles relaxed, and I fell limp into my chair.

"You need stimulant," said my visitor, kindly. "Go take a drop of your Old Reserve, and then come back here to me. I've something to say to you."

"Will you join me?" I asked, faintly.

"No," returned the visitor. "I am so fond of whiskey that I never molest it. That act which is your stimulant is death to the rye. Never realized that, did you?"

"No, I never did," I said, meekly.

"And yet you claim to love it. Bah!" he said.

And then I obeyed his command, drained my glass to the dregs, and returned. "What is your mission?" I asked, when I had made myself as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances.

"To relieve you of your woes," he said.

"You are a homoeopath, I observe," said I, with a sneer. "You are a homoeopath in theory and an allopath in practice."

"I am not usually unintelligent," said he. "I fail to comprehend your meaning. Perhaps you express yourself badly."

"I wish you'd express yourself for Zulu-land," I retorted, hotly. "What I mean is, you believe in the _similia similibus_ business, but you prescribe large doses. I don't believe troubles like mine can be cured on your plan. A man can't get rid of his stock by adding to it."

"Ah, I see. You think I have added to your troubles?"

"I don't think so," I answered, with a fond glance at my ruined tie. "I know so."

"Well, wait until I have laid my plan before you, and see if you won't change your mind," said my visitor, significantly.

"All right," I said. "Proceed. Only hurry. I go to bed early, as a rule, and it's getting quite early now."

"It's only one o'clock," said the visitor, ignoring the sarcasm. "But I will hasten, as I've several other calls to make before breakfast."

"Are you a milkman?" I asked.

"You are flippant," he replied. "But, Hiram," he added, "I have come here to aid you in spite of your unworthiness. You want to know what to provide for your club night on the 15th. You want something that will knock the 'Martyr's Night' silly."

"Not exactly that," I replied, "I don't want anything so abominably good as to make all the other things I have done seem failures. That is not good business."

"Would you like to be hailed as the discoverer of genius? Would you like to be the responsible agent for the greatest exhibition of skill in a certain direction ever seen? Would you like to become the most famous _impresario_ the world has ever known?"

"Now," I said, forgetting my dignity under the enthusiasm with which I was inspired by my visitor's words, and infected more or less with his undoubtedly magnetite spirit--"now you're shouting."

"I thought so, Hiram. I thought so, and that's why I am here. I saw you on Wall Street to-day, and read your difficulty at once in your eyes, and I resolved to help you. I am a magician, and one or two little things have happened of late to make me wish to prestidigitate in public. I knew you were after a show of some kind, and I've come to offer you my services."

"Oh, pshaw!" I said. "The members of the Gutenberg Club are men of brains--not children. Card tricks are hackneyed, and sleight-of-hand shows pall."

"Do they, indeed?" said the visitor. "Well, mine won't. If you don't believe it, I'll prove to you what I can do."

"I have no paraphernalia," I said.

"Well, I have," said he, and as he spoke, a pack of cards seemed to grow out of my hands. I must have turned pale at this unexpected happening, for my visitor smiled, and said:

"Don't be frightened. That's only one of my tricks. Now choose a card," he added, "and when you have done so, toss the pack in the air. Don't tell me what the card is; it alone will fall to the floor."

"Nonsense!" said I. "It's impossible."

"Do as I tell you."

I did as he told me, to a degree only. I tossed the cards in the air without choosing one, although I made a feint of doing so.

_Not a card fell back to the floor. They every one disappeared from view in the ceiling._ If it had not been for the heavy chair I had rolled in front of the door, I think I should have fled.

"How's that for a trick?" asked my visitor.

I said nothing, for the very good reason that my words stuck in my throat.

"Give me a little _creme de menthe_, will you, please?" said he, after a moment's pause.

"I haven't a drop in the house," I said, relieved to think that this wonderful being could come down to anything so earthly.

"Pshaw, Hiram!" he ejaculated, apparently in disgust. "Don't be mean, and, above all, don't lie. Why, man, you've got a bottle full of it in your hand! Do you want it all?"

He was right. Where it came from I do not know; but, beyond question, the graceful, slim-necked bottle was in my right hand, and my left held a liqueur-glass of exquisite form.

"Say," I gasped, as soon as I was able to collect my thoughts, "what are your terms?"

"Wait a moment," he answered. "Let me do a little mind-reading before we arrange preliminaries."

"I haven't much of a mind to read tonight," I answered, wildly.

"You're right there," said he. "It's like a dime novel, that mind of yours to-night. But I'll do the best I can with it. Suppose you think of your favorite poem, and after turning it over in your mind carefully for a few minutes, select two lines from it, concealing them, of course, from me, and I will tell you what they are."

Now my favorite poem, I regret to say, is Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwock," a fact I was ashamed to confess to an utter stranger, so I tried to deceive him by thinking of some other lines. The effort was hardly successful, for the only other lines I could call to mind at the moment were from Rudyard Kipling's rhyme, "The Post that Fitted," and which ran,

"Year by year, in pious patience, vengeful Mrs. Boffin sits
Waiting for the Sleary babies to develop Sleary's fits."

"Humph!" ejaculated my visitor. "You're a great Hiram, you are."

And then rising from his chair and walking to my "poet's corner," the magician selected two volumes.

"There," said he, handing me the _Departmental Ditties_. "You'll find the lines you tried to fool me with at the foot of page thirteen. Look."

I looked, and there lay that vile Sleary sentiment, in all the majesty of type, staring me in the eyes.

"And here," added my visitor, opening _Alice in the Looking-Glass_--"here is the poem that to your mind holds all the philosophy of life:

"'Come to my arms, my beamish boy,
He chortled in his joy.'"

I blushed and trembled. Blushed that he should discover the weakness of my taste, trembled at his power.

"I don't blame you for coloring," said the magician. "But I thought you said the Gutenberg was made up of men of brains? Do you think you could stay on the rolls a month if they were aware that your poetic ideals are summed up in the 'Jabberwock' and 'Sleary's Fits'?"

"My taste might be far worse," I answered.

"Yes, it might. You might have stooped to liking some of your own verses. I ought really to congratulate you, I suppose," retorted the visitor, with a sneering laugh.

This roused my ire again.

"Who are you, anyhow, that you come here and take me to task?" I demanded, angrily. "I'll like anything I please, and without asking your permission. If I cared more for the _Peterkin Papers_ than I do for Shakespeare, I wouldn't be accountable to you, and that's all there is about it."

"Never mind who I am," said the visitor. "Suffice to say that I am myself. You'll know my name soon enough. In fact, you will pronounce it involuntarily the first thing when you wake in the morning, and then--" Here he shook his head ominously, and I felt myself grow rigid with fright in my chair. "Now for the final trick," he said, after a moment's pause. "Think of where you would most like to be at this moment, and I'll exert my power to put you there. Only close your eyes first."

I closed my eyes and wished. When I opened them I was in the billiard-room of the Gutenberg Club with Perkins and Tompson.

"For Heaven's sake, Spencer," they said, in surprise, "where did you drop in from? Why, man, you are as white as a sheet. And what a necktie! Take it off!"

"Grab hold of me, boys, and hold me fast," I pleaded, falling on my knees in terror. "If you don't, I believe I'll die."

The idea of returning to my sanctum was intolerably dreadful to me.

"Ha! ha!" laughed the magician, for even as I spoke to Perkins and Tompson I found myself seated opposite my infernal visitor in my room once more. "They couldn't keep you an instant with me summoning you back."

His laughter was terrible; his frown was pleasanter; and I felt myself gradually losing control of my senses.

"Go," I cried. "Leave me, or you will have the crime of murder on your conscience."

"I have no con--" he began; but I heard no more.

That is the last I remember of that fearful night. I must have fainted, and then have fallen into a deep slumber.

When I waked it was morning, and I was alone, but undressed and in bed, unconscionably weak, and surrounded by medicine bottles of many kinds. The clock on the mantle on the other side of the room indicated that it was after