Mr. Whedell was about to thank his preserver most profusely, and Mrs.

Chiffield to burst into a new torrent, when Matthew, to avoid these demonstrations, rose, opened the door, and let in the pack of hungry creditors.

Now Matthew had, in these fleeting fifteen minutes, thought up no plan of settlement. Being taken aback by the sudden reappearance of the creditors, he did not know what to propose.

"Everything fixed, I s'pose?" said Rickarts, the shoemaker.

When Matthew was in strong doubt what to do in any case, it was his invariable custom to postpone. "I think," he feebly suggested, "that we had better postpone final action, say till three P.M. It would give us time--"

"Can't come it!" "No go!" "Now, or never!" were some of the exclamations which went up from the excited crowd.

Matthew was too good natured to quarrel with these insinuations. "My friends," said he, "as you appear to have unlimited confidence in each other, suppose you appoint a committee to dispose of this property, which my client generously" (cries of "Oh! oh!") "turns over to you, and divide the proceeds among yourselves _pro rata_"

The creditors looked at each other suspiciously. A want of that childlike trust which, in a perfect state of society should exist between man and man, was unhappily too apparent.

Just then, when Matthew was at his wits' end, the police man who guarded the front door entered the room, and delivered a note to Mr. Whedell.

That gentleman perused it languidly, and pa.s.sed it to Matthew.

"Good news," said he. "Mr. Abernuckle, the owner of these premises, who was intending to move in to-day, writes that he will not be able to take possession until noon to-morrow. Therefore, I say, let the creditors employ an auctioneer, hang out the red flag, sell, and divide, before that period arrives."

The large creditors were silent--Quigg veiling his dissatisfaction under a look of complete misanthropy--but the small ones, headed by Rickarts, the shoemaker, highly commended it.

"Besides," added a b.u.t.ter man, who had originally been in the mock-auction line, "don't ye see, we can all stay at the auction, and kind o' bid on the things. Hey?" The b.u.t.ter man nodded at the lesser creditors.

The idea took; only a few of the larger creditors holding out against it.

"My friends," again observed Matthew, drawing on his stores of legal knowledge, "you seem to forget that, if my client chose to resist your claims, he could retain a large amount of furniture as household articles under the law, which exempts certain necessary things. But, with rare magnanimity, he gives up all."

The allusion to magnanimity produced some derisive laughs, which slightly nettled Matthew.

"Auction it off," said he, "or we throw ourselves back on our reserved rights."

At this hint, everybody gave in; and a committee, consisting of Quigg, Rickarts, and the b.u.t.ter man, was appointed to make all the arrangements for an immediate sale.

It is not pleasant to pursue this painful theme--the decline and fall of the Whedell household--farther. Let the historian barely record, that the sale attracted a large crowd, and that, by the ingenious side bids of the creditors, the furniture was run up to twice its original value (no uncommon thing at auctions); that the creditors, large and small, were well satisfied with the results; that Mr. Whedell and daughter moved to Boston, and became stipendiaries upon a younger brother, who had made a fortune in the upholstery business, and whom Mr. Whedell had always despised; that Mr. Chiffield took to drink tenaciously in consequence of his misfortunes, and never saw or sought after his wife from the day when he discovered that she was dowerless; that Mrs.

Chiffield obtained a divorce from the bonds of matrimony, but had not married again at last accounts; and that Matthew Maltboy, Esq., on looking over the whole episode of his acquaintance with the Whedells thanked his stars that he had got out of their entanglements on the reasonable terms of three hundred dollars.

BOOK ELEVENTH.

DISCOVERIES.

CHAPTER I.

THE OLD HOUSE REVISITED.

In the month that followed the acquittal of Marcus Wilkeson, three real murders, a railway collision killing thirty persons, and a steamboat explosion almost as tragical in its results, occurred. The Minford affair was already getting old. Public curiosity, except in the immediate neighborhood of the house, no longer exercised itself upon the problem which all of Coroner Bullfast's powers of a.n.a.lysis had failed to solve.

Marcus Wilkeson might have derived a selfish consolation from the fact that other mysteries and calamities were causing his name, which last month was on the tongue of the whole town, to be forgotten. But he had a n.o.bler and truer source of consolation in his dear books. In the presence of the philosophers, and sages, and historians, and novelists, and poets, and wits, the men of genius of the past, chroniclers of the loss of empires, grave men who taught the vanity of life, and funny men who taught the same lesson in a different way, Marcus felt his pack of sorrows considerably lightening. His first, last, only disappointment in love had subsided into a gentle and not disagreeable melancholy. His trial, and the dreadful notoriety which his name had acquired, had imparted to his mild nature a gentle tinge of cynicism, which improved him.

Marcus was sitting, one morning, in the little back parlor, idly turning over the leaves of an old folio, and looking with a half eye through the closed window at the houses opposite, and thinking what a deal of trouble it was possible to extract from a single block of buildings, when a slight rap was heard at the door. Simultaneously, the door was pushed open, and Wesley Tiffles shot in.

He had brought all his tonical properties with him. Good nature and cheerfulness effervesced from his face. Through the trial, and since the acquittal, Wesley Tiffles had stuck to Marcus. Twice, often three times a day, he called, and was always welcomed by Marcus, and not inhospitably received by Miss Philomela Wilkeson. The interviews between that lady and the romantic speculator usually took place, quite by accident, in the entry, on the arrival or the departure of Mr. Tiffles; but, as it happened, not with the cognizance of Marcus.

On one occasion--at the edge of evening--Marcus went into the entry a few minutes after Tiffles had left the room, and saw that gentleman and Philomela standing in the doorway. Tiffles appeared to be in the act of raising the lady's hand to kiss it; but, if that were his intention, he abandoned it on seeing Marcus, and shook the attenuated fingers instead.

Then he coughed, and, saying "Good-night," went down the steps, as if he had not seen Marcus in the gloom. Miss Wilkeson coughed also (why do people always cough?), and, turning to her approaching brother, said it was a cool night, which was not true, as the night was agreeably warm.

Marcus had never afterward seen them together, and had forgotten this slightly mysterious circ.u.mstance. Wesley Tiffles had, as usual, something enlivening to tell.

"Got the funniest piece of news for you, my dear fellow!" said he.

"Anything funny is always welcome, Tiffles," said he, closing his folio, that he might not appear to obstruct his friend's jocosity.

"I've heard from that infernal old panorama--when I say infernal, of course I don't mean to imply that it wasn't a splendid idea, if I had had capital enough to see it through--and what do you s'pose the landlord and the other creditor have done with it? You couldn't guess in a month."

"Well, what?" asked Marcus Wilkeson, laughing in antic.i.p.ation.

"Ha! ha! cut it up, and sold it for window curtains. A friend of mine, who pa.s.sed through there the other day, says there's a picture of a lion, or a palm tree, or a slice of a desert--princ.i.p.ally desert--hung up in every other window. And the best of it is, that they made a good thing of it. The curtains brought at least twice what I owed them. Great heavens! why didn't I think of it myself?"

"Of what?"

"Why, to cut up the panorama into window curtains, when Patching had finished it, and--ha! ha!--peddle them through the country. By Jupiter!

that speculation may be worth trying yet. But at present I have my new patent process for----"

Marcus coughed, and opened the book. Tiffles accepted the delicate hint in a spirit of true friendship, and let his new patent process drop.

"Marcus," said he, "I don't wish to revive an unpleasant subject; but have you no idea what the late Mr. Minford was trying to invent?"

"Not the least. I never trouble myself about inventions, as you well know, who are full of them. Besides, poor Mr. Minford was not communicative on that subject. He kept the secret even from his daughter."

"You have a claim on the apparatus, whatever it is."

"Yes. Mr. Minford insisted on giving me a paper to that effect, as security for two loans of five hundred dollars each. I took it to please the old gentleman." Marcus felt like groaning, as he thought of the sorrows that he had derived from his connection with the Minford family; but he had just been reading of the consolations of philosophy, and he stifled the rising weakness.

"I have thought, Marcus, that there might be something about that unfinished machine that could be patented for the benefit of Miss Minford. You know I am a good judge of patentable things."

"What do you propose, then?" asked Marcus, concealing, with an effort, the emotions which the mention of Miss Minford always caused."

"That we go to the house together. The legal claim which you hold upon the machine ent.i.tles you to see it, if only to ascertain that it has not been stolen."

"The visit you propose is a disagreeable one; but if you think there is a possibility of benefiting Miss Minford, I will go. Not that she is likely to be in want, however, at present, for I understand that a wealthy lady, Mrs. Crull, who befriended her at the inquest, you remember, has taken her to her own house."

Without further words--for Marcus retained his old business habit of forming his conclusions suddenly, and adhering to them--the friends proceeded to the late residence of Mr. Minford.

Marcus had not yet philosophically conquered his dread of recognition in the street as the man who had been suspected of a murder. He b.u.t.toned his overcoat up to his chin, pulled his hat over his brow, and walked fast. As he had purposely altered his style of dress since the inquest, he was not readily identified. But he was sympathetically conscious that several persons whom he pa.s.sed, and who glanced at him, knew him, and that he was pointed out to others when his back was turned.

Reaching the house, they hurried up stairs, hoping to run the gauntlet of the three floors in safety. Luckily, there had been a general move from the premises--the lodgings being less desirable since the supposed murder. The faces which thrust themselves out of the doorways as the two visitors pa.s.sed, were strange ones.