The Wrong Box

R >> Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne >> The Wrong Box


A copy of the work (for the date of my tale is already yesterday) still
figured in dusty solitude in the bookstall at Waterloo; and Gideon, as
he passed with his ticket for Hampton Court, smiled contemptuously at
the creature of his thoughts. What an idle ambition was the author's!
How far beneath him was the practice of that childish art! With his hand
closing on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the
muse who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French
extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round
the springs of Helicon, among her Grecian sisters.

Robust, practical reflection still cheered the young barrister upon his
journey. Again and again he selected the little country-house in its
islet of great oaks, which he was to make his future home. Like a
prudent householder, he projected improvements as he passed; to one he
added a stable, to another a tennis-court, a third he supplied with a
becoming rustic boat-house.

'How little a while ago,' he could not but reflect, 'I was a careless
young dog with no thought but to be comfortable! I cared for nothing
but boating and detective novels. I would have passed an old-fashioned
country-house with large kitchen-garden, stabling, boat-house, and
spacious offices, without so much as a look, and certainly would have
made no enquiry as to the drains. How a man ripens with the years!'

The intelligent reader will perceive the ravages of Miss Hazeltine.
Gideon had carried Julia straight to Mr Bloomfield's house; and
that gentleman, having been led to understand she was the victim of
oppression, had noisily espoused her cause. He worked himself into
a fine breathing heat; in which, to a man of his temperament, action
became needful.

'I do not know which is the worse,' he cried, 'the fraudulent old
villain or the unmanly young cub. I will write to the Pall Mall and
expose them. Nonsense, sir; they must be exposed! It's a public duty.
Did you not tell me the fellow was a Tory? O, the uncle is a Radical
lecturer, is he? No doubt the uncle has been grossly wronged. But of
course, as you say, that makes a change; it becomes scarce so much a
public duty.'

And he sought and instantly found a fresh outlet for his alacrity. Miss
Hazeltine (he now perceived) must be kept out of the way; his houseboat
was lying ready--he had returned but a day or two before from his usual
cruise; there was no place like a houseboat for concealment; and that
very morning, in the teeth of the easterly gale, Mr and Mrs Bloomfield
and Miss Julia Hazeltine had started forth on their untimely voyage.
Gideon pled in vain to be allowed to join the party. 'No, Gid,' said his
uncle. 'You will be watched; you must keep away from us.' Nor had the
barrister ventured to contest this strange illusion; for he feared if
he rubbed off any of the romance, that Mr Bloomfield might weary of the
whole affair. And his discretion was rewarded; for the Squirradical,
laying a heavy hand upon his nephew's shoulder, had added these notable
expressions: 'I see what you are after, Gid. But if you're going to get
the girl, you have to work, sir.'

These pleasing sounds had cheered the barrister all day, as he sat
reading in chambers; they continued to form the ground-base of his manly
musings as he was whirled to Hampton Court; even when he landed at the
station, and began to pull himself together for his delicate interview,
the voice of Uncle Ned and the eyes of Julia were not forgotten.

But now it began to rain surprises: in all Hampton Court there was no
Kurnaul Villa, no Count Tarnow, and no count. This was strange; but,
viewed in the light of the incoherency of his instructions, not perhaps
inexplicable; Mr Dickson had been lunching, and he might have made some
fatal oversight in the address. What was the thoroughly prompt, manly,
and businesslike step? thought Gideon; and he answered himself at
once: 'A telegram, very laconic.' Speedily the wires were flashing the
following very important missive: 'Dickson, Langham Hotel. Villa and
persons both unknown here, suppose erroneous address; follow self next
train.--Forsyth.' And at the Langham Hotel, sure enough, with a brow
expressive of dispatch and intellectual effort, Gideon descended not
long after from a smoking hansom.

I do not suppose that Gideon will ever forget the Langham Hotel. No
Count Tarnow was one thing; no John Dickson and no Ezra Thomas, quite
another. How, why, and what next, danced in his bewildered brain; from
every centre of what we playfully call the human intellect incongruous
messages were telegraphed; and before the hubbub of dismay had quite
subsided, the barrister found himself driving furiously for his
chambers. There was at least a cave of refuge; it was at least a place
to think in; and he climbed the stair, put his key in the lock and
opened the door, with some approach to hope.

It was all dark within, for the night had some time fallen; but Gideon
knew his room, he knew where the matches stood on the end of the
chimney-piece; and he advanced boldly, and in so doing dashed himself
against a heavy body; where (slightly altering the expressions of the
song) no heavy body should have been. There had been nothing there when
Gideon went out; he had locked the door behind him, he had found it
locked on his return, no one could have entered, the furniture could not
have changed its own position. And yet undeniably there was a something
there. He thrust out his hands in the darkness. Yes, there was
something, something large, something smooth, something cold.

'Heaven forgive me!' said Gideon, 'it feels like a piano.'

And the next moment he remembered the vestas in his waistcoat pocket and
had struck a light.

It was indeed a piano that met his doubtful gaze; a vast and costly
instrument, stained with the rains of the afternoon and defaced
with recent scratches. The light of the vesta was reflected from the
varnished sides, like a staice in quiet water; and in the farther end of
the room the shadow of that strange visitor loomed bulkily and wavered
on the wall.

Gideon let the match burn to his fingers, and the darkness closed once
more on his bewilderment. Then with trembling hands he lit the lamp and
drew near. Near or far, there was no doubt of the fact: the thing was
a piano. There, where by all the laws of God and man it was impossible
that it should be--there the thing impudently stood. Gideon threw open
the keyboard and struck a chord. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the
room. 'Is there anything wrong with me?' he thought, with a pang; and
drawing in a seat, obstinately persisted in his attempts to ravish
silence, now with sparkling arpeggios, now with a sonata of Beethoven's
which (in happier days) he knew to be one of the loudest pieces of that
powerful composer. Still not a sound. He gave the Broadwood two great
bangs with his clenched first. All was still as the grave. The young
barrister started to his feet.

'I am stark-staring mad,' he cried aloud, 'and no one knows it but
myself. God's worst curse has fallen on me.'

His fingers encountered his watch-chain; instantly he had plucked forth
his watch and held it to his ear. He could hear it ticking.

'I am not deaf,' he said aloud. 'I am only insane. My mind has quitted
me for ever.'

He looked uneasily about the room, and--gazed with lacklustre eyes at
the chair in which Mr Dickson had installed himself. The end of a cigar
lay near on the fender.

'No,' he thought, 'I don't believe that was a dream; but God knows
my mind is failing rapidly. I seem to be hungry, for instance; it's
probably another hallucination. Still I might try. I shall have one more
good meal; I shall go to the Cafe Royal, and may possibly be removed
from there direct to the asylum.'

He wondered with morbid interest, as he descended the stairs, how he
would first betray his terrible condition--would he attack a waiter? or
eat glass?--and when he had mounted into a cab, he bade the man drive to
Nichol's, with a lurking fear that there was no such place.

The flaring, gassy entrance of the cafe speedily set his mind at rest;
he was cheered besides to recognize his favourite waiter; his orders
appeared to be coherent; the dinner, when it came, was quite a sensible
meal, and he ate it with enjoyment. 'Upon my word,' he reflected, 'I
am about tempted to indulge a hope. Have I been hasty? Have I done what
Robert Skill would have done?' Robert Skill (I need scarcely mention)
was the name of the principal character in Who Put Back the Clock? It
had occurred to the author as a brilliant and probable invention; to
readers of a critical turn, Robert appeared scarce upon a level with his
surname; but it is the difficulty of the police romance, that the reader
is always a man of such vastly greater ingenuity than the writer. In the
eyes of his creator, however, Robert Skill was a word to conjure with;
the thought braced and spurred him; what that brilliant creature would
have done Gideon would do also. This frame of mind is not uncommon; the
distressed general, the baited divine, the hesitating author, decide
severally to do what Napoleon, what St Paul, what Shakespeare would
have done; and there remains only the minor question, What is that? In
Gideon's case one thing was clear: Skill was a man of singular decision,
he would have taken some step (whatever it was) at once; and the only
step that Gideon could think of was to return to his chambers.

This being achieved, all further inspiration failed him, and he stood
pitifully staring at the instrument of his confusion. To touch the keys
again was more than he durst venture on; whether they had maintained
their former silence, or responded with the tones of the last trump,
it would have equally dethroned his resolution. 'It may be a practical
jest,' he reflected, 'though it seems elaborate and costly. And yet what
else can it be? It MUST be a practical jest.' And just then his eye fell
upon a feature which seemed corroborative of that view: the pagoda of
cigars which Michael had erected ere he left the chambers. 'Why that?'
reflected Gideon. 'It seems entirely irresponsible.' And drawing near,
he gingerly demolished it. 'A key,' he thought. 'Why that? And why
so conspicuously placed?' He made the circuit of the instrument, and
perceived the keyhole at the back. 'Aha! this is what the key is for,'
said he. 'They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger.' And
with that he turned the key and raised the lid.

In what antics of agony, in what fits of flighty resolution, in what
collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous
to enquire too closely.

That trill of tiny song with which the eaves-birds of London welcome
the approach of day found him limp and rumpled and bloodshot, and with a
mind still vacant of resource. He rose and looked forth unrejoicingly on
blinded windows, an empty street, and the grey daylight dotted with the
yellow lamps. There are mornings when the city seems to awake with a
sick headache; this was one of them; and still the twittering reveille
of the sparrows stirred in Gideon's spirit.

'Day here,' he thought, 'and I still helpless! This must come to an
end.' And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket, and set
forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth
time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, and regrets. To call
in the police, to give up the body, to cover London with handbills
describing John Dickson and Ezra Thomas, to fill the papers with
paragraphs, Mysterious Occurrence in the Temple--Mr Forsyth admitted to
bail, this was one course, an easy course, a safe course; but not, the
more he reflected on it, not a pleasant one. For, was it not to publish
abroad a number of singular facts about himself? A child ought to
have seen through the story of these adventurers, and he had gaped and
swallowed it. A barrister of the least self-respect should have refused
to listen to clients who came before him in a manner so irregular, and
he had listened. And O, if he had only listened; but he had gone upon
their errand--he, a barrister, uninstructed even by the shadow of
a solicitor--upon an errand fit only for a private detective; and
alas!--and for the hundredth time the blood surged to his brow--he had
taken their money! 'No,' said he, 'the thing is as plain as St Paul's. I
shall be dishonoured! I have smashed my career for a five-pound note.'

Between the possibility of being hanged in all innocence, and the
certainty of a public and merited disgrace, no gentleman of spirit
could long hesitate. After three gulps of that hot, snuffy, and muddy
beverage, that passes on the streets of London for a decoction of the
coffee berry, Gideon's mind was made up. He would do without the police.
He must face the other side of the dilemma, and be Robert Skill in
earnest. What would Robert Skill have done? How does a gentleman dispose
of a dead body, honestly come by? He remembered the inimitable story
of the hunchback; reviewed its course, and dismissed it for a worthless
guide. It was impossible to prop a corpse on the corner of Tottenham
Court Road without arousing fatal curiosity in the bosoms of the
passers-by; as for lowering it down a London chimney, the physical
obstacles were insurmountable. To get it on board a train and drop it
out, or on the top of an omnibus and drop it off, were equally out
of the question. To get it on a yacht and drop it overboard, was more
conceivable; but for a man of moderate means it seemed extravagant. The
hire of the yacht was in itself a consideration; the subsequent support
of the whole crew (which seemed a necessary consequence) was simply
not to be thought of. His uncle and the houseboat here occurred in very
luminous colours to his mind. A musical composer (say, of the name of
Jimson) might very well suffer, like Hogarth's musician before him, from
the disturbances of London. He might very well be pressed for time to
finish an opera--say the comic opera Orange Pekoe--Orange Pekoe, music
by Jimson--'this young maestro, one of the most promising of our
recent English school'--vigorous entrance of the drums, etc.--the whole
character of Jimson and his music arose in bulk before the mind of
Gideon. What more likely than Jimson's arrival with a grand piano (say,
at Padwick), and his residence in a houseboat alone with the unfinished
score of Orange Pekoe? His subsequent disappearance, leaving nothing
behind but an empty piano case, it might be more difficult to account
for. And yet even that was susceptible of explanation. For, suppose
Jimson had gone mad over a fugal passage, and had thereupon destroyed
the accomplice of his infamy, and plunged into the welcome river? What
end, on the whole, more probable for a modern musician?

'By Jove, I'll do it,' cried Gideon. 'Jimson is the boy!'



CHAPTER XI. The Maestro Jimson

Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield having announced his intention to stay in the
neighbourhood of Maidenhead, what more probable than that the Maestro
Jimson should turn his mind toward Padwick? Near this pleasant riverside
village he remembered to have observed an ancient, weedy houseboat lying
moored beside a tuft of willows. It had stirred in him, in his careless
hours, as he pulled down the river under a more familiar name, a certain
sense of the romantic; and when the nice contrivance of his story was
already complete in his mind, he had come near pulling it all down
again, like an ungrateful clock, in order to introduce a chapter in
which Richard Skill (who was always being decoyed somewhere) should
be decoyed on board that lonely hulk by Lord Bellew and the American
desperado Gin Sling. It was fortunate he had not done so, he reflected,
since the hulk was now required for very different purposes.

Jimson, a man of inconspicuous costume, but insinuating manners,
had little difficulty in finding the hireling who had charge of the
houseboat, and still less in persuading him to resign his care. The rent
was almost nominal, the entry immediate, the key was exchanged against a
suitable advance in money, and Jimson returned to town by the afternoon
train to see about dispatching his piano.

'I will be down tomorrow,' he had said reassuringly. 'My opera is waited
for with such impatience, you know.'

And, sure enough, about the hour of noon on the following day, Jimson
might have been observed ascending the riverside road that goes from
Padwick to Great Haverham, carrying in one hand a basket of provisions,
and under the other arm a leather case containing (it is to be
conjectured) the score of Orange Pekoe. It was October weather; the
stone-grey sky was full of larks, the leaden mirror of the Thames
brightened with autumnal foliage, and the fallen leaves of the chestnuts
chirped under the composer's footing. There is no time of the year
in England more courageous; and Jimson, though he was not without his
troubles, whistled as he went.

A little above Padwick the river lies very solitary. On the opposite
shore the trees of a private park enclose the view, the chimneys of the
mansion just pricking forth above their clusters; on the near side the
path is bordered by willows. Close among these lay the houseboat, a
thing so soiled by the tears of the overhanging willows, so grown upon
with parasites, so decayed, so battered, so neglected, such a haunt of
rats, so advertised a storehouse of rheumatic agonies, that the heart
of an intending occupant might well recoil. A plank, by way of flying
drawbridge, joined it to the shore. And it was a dreary moment for
Jimson when he pulled this after him and found himself alone on this
unwholesome fortress. He could hear the rats scuttle and flop in the
abhorred interior; the key cried among the wards like a thing in pain;
the sitting-room was deep in dust, and smelt strong of bilge-water. It
could not be called a cheerful spot, even for a composer absorbed in
beloved toil; how much less for a young gentleman haunted by alarms and
awaiting the arrival of a corpse!

He sat down, cleared away a piece of the table, and attacked the cold
luncheon in his basket. In case of any subsequent inquiry into the fate
of Jimson, It was desirable he should be little seen: in other words,
that he should spend the day entirely in the house. To this end, and
further to corroborate his fable, he had brought in the leather case not
only writing materials, but a ream of large-size music paper, such as he
considered suitable for an ambitious character like Jimson's. 'And now
to work,' said he, when he had satisfied his appetite. 'We must leave
traces of the wretched man's activity.' And he wrote in bold characters:

ORANGE PEKOE.
Op. 17.
J. B. JIMSON.
Vocal and p. f. score.

'I suppose they never do begin like this,' reflected Gideon; 'but then
it's quite out of the question for me to tackle a full score, and
Jimson was so unconventional. A dedication would be found convincing, I
believe. "Dedicated to" (let me see) "to William Ewart Gladstone, by his
obedient servant the composer." And now some music: I had better avoid
the overture; it seems to present difficulties. Let's give an air for
the tenor: key--O, something modern!--seven sharps.' And he made a
businesslike signature across the staves, and then paused and browsed
for a while on the handle of his pen. Melody, with no better inspiration
than a sheet of paper, is not usually found to spring unbidden in the
mind of the amateur; nor is the key of seven sharps a place of much
repose to the untried. He cast away that sheet. 'It will help to build
up the character of Jimson,' Gideon remarked, and again waited on
the muse, in various keys and on divers sheets of paper, but all with
results so inconsiderable that he stood aghast. 'It's very odd,' thought
he. 'I seem to have less fancy than I thought, or this is an off-day
with me; yet Jimson must leave something.' And again he bent himself to
the task.

Presently the penetrating chill of the houseboat began to attack the
very seat of life. He desisted from his unremunerative trial, and, to
the audible annoyance of the rats, walked briskly up and down the cabin.
Still he was cold. 'This is all nonsense,' said he. 'I don't care about
the risk, but I will not catch a catarrh. I must get out of this den.'

He stepped on deck, and passing to the bow of his embarkation, looked
for the first time up the river. He started. Only a few hundred yards
above another houseboat lay moored among the willows. It was very
spick-and-span, an elegant canoe hung at the stern, the windows were
concealed by snowy curtains, a flag floated from a staff. The more
Gideon looked at it, the more there mingled with his disgust a sense
of impotent surprise. It was very like his uncle's houseboat; it was
exceedingly like--it was identical. But for two circumstances, he
could have sworn it was the same. The first, that his uncle had gone to
Maidenhead, might be explained away by that flightiness of purpose which
is so common a trait among the more than usually manly. The second,
however, was conclusive: it was not in the least like Mr Bloomfield to
display a banner on his floating residence; and if he ever did, it
would certainly be dyed in hues of emblematical propriety. Now the
Squirradical, like the vast majority of the more manly, had drawn
knowledge at the wells of Cambridge--he was wooden spoon in the year
1850; and the flag upon the houseboat streamed on the afternoon air with
the colours of that seat of Toryism, that cradle of Puseyism, that
home of the inexact and the effete Oxford. Still it was strangely like,
thought Gideon.

And as he thus looked and thought, the door opened, and a young lady
stepped forth on deck. The barrister dropped and fled into his cabin--it
was Julia Hazeltine! Through the window he watched her draw in the
canoe, get on board of it, cast off, and come dropping downstream in his
direction.

'Well, all is up now,' said he, and he fell on a seat.

'Good-afternoon, miss,' said a voice on the water. Gideon knew it for
the voice of his landlord.

'Good-afternoon,' replied Julia, 'but I don't know who you are; do I? O
yes, I do though. You are the nice man that gave us leave to sketch from
the old houseboat.'

Gideon's heart leaped with fear.

'That's it,' returned the man. 'And what I wanted to say was as you
couldn't do it any more. You see I've let it.'

'Let it!' cried Julia.

'Let it for a month,' said the man. 'Seems strange, don't it? Can't see
what the party wants with it?'

'It seems very romantic of him, I think,' said Julia, 'What sort of a
person is he?'

Julia in her canoe, the landlord in his wherry, were close alongside,
and holding on by the gunwale of the houseboat; so that not a word was
lost on Gideon.

'He's a music-man,' said the landlord, 'or at least that's what he told
me, miss; come down here to write an op'ra.'

'Really!' cried Julia, 'I never heard of anything so delightful! Why, we
shall be able to slip down at night and hear him improvise! What' is his
name?'

'Jimson,' said the man.

'Jimson?' repeated Julia, and interrogated her memory in vain. But
indeed our rising school of English music boasts so many professors that
we rarely hear of one till he is made a baronet. 'Are you sure you have
it right?'

'Made him spell it to me,' replied the landlord. 'J-I-M-S-O-N--Jimson;
and his op'ra's called--some kind of tea.'

'SOME KIND OF TEA!' cried the girl. 'What a very singular name for an
opera! What can it be about?' And Gideon heard her pretty laughter flow
abroad. 'We must try to get acquainted with this Mr Jimson; I feel sure
he must be nice.'

'Well, miss, I'm afraid I must be going on. I've got to be at Haverham,
you see.'

'O, don't let me keep you, you kind man!' said Julia. 'Good afternoon.'

'Good afternoon to you, miss.'

Gideon sat in the cabin a prey to the most harrowing thoughts. Here he
was anchored to a rotting houseboat, soon to be anchored to it still
more emphatically by the presence of the corpse, and here was the
country buzzing about him, and young ladies already proposing pleasure
parties to surround his house at night. Well, that meant the gallows;
and much he cared for that. What troubled him now was Julia's
indescribable levity. That girl would scrape acquaintance with anybody;
she had no reserve, none of the enamel of the lady. She was familiar
with a brute like his landlord; she took an immediate interest (which
she lacked even the delicacy to conceal) in a creature like Jimson! He
could conceive her asking Jimson to have tea with her! And it was for a
girl like this that a man like Gideon--Down, manly heart!

He was interrupted by a sound that sent him whipping behind the door in
a trice. Miss Hazeltine had stepped on board the houseboat. Her sketch
was promising; judging from the stillness, she supposed Jimson not yet
come; and she had decided to seize occasion and complete the work
of art. Down she sat therefore in the bow, produced her block and
water-colours, and was soon singing over (what used to be called) the
ladylike accomplishment. Now and then indeed her song was interrupted,
as she searched in her memory for some of the odious little receipts
by means of which the game is practised--or used to be practised in the
brave days of old; they say the world, and those ornaments of the world,
young ladies, are become more sophisticated now; but Julia had probably
studied under Pitman, and she stood firm in the old ways.