Short Fiction · The Facts In The Curious Case Of H Hyrtl Esq (4/8)

IV

The little man straddled a chair and gave a tug at his beard.

“A nice fellow, you are,” he muttered, with a fine show of indignation. “You save a man’s life and forget all about him. What kind of behavior is that? I was starving last month and you loaned me a dollar. Here it is.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Hugh, a trifle mollified; “I remember you now.”

“I should have repaid it before, but I didn’t have it.”

“Excellent reason; but then there was no hurry. I don’t see how you found me, though.”

“No trouble about that; all I had to do was to ask that fat harridan downstairs; the difficulty was to get the coin. After you bolted I had something to eat and invested the change in pencils, which I peddled at a profit, turned the proceeds into fancy notions; and, here I am, hale and hearty, with the future before me and a cool hundred in my pocket.”

“Bravo!” said Hugh. “I like your grit.”

“Bah! I’ll be a millionaire yet, and buy some of your pictures⁠—that one, for instance; the pretty girl who is to be your wife.”

“And how the dickens did you know that?”

“I’m quick as a flash, that’s what I am. I can catch on quicker than any man you ever saw. But anyone would have known what was going on here. Bless your dear soul, I had only to catch a glimpse of her sweet face to know what was up. You’re not painting her picture for money, I’ll be bound.”

“Sir,” cried Hugh, irritated in spite of himself by the free and easy form of address, “I am very busy, and if⁠—”

“Tut, tut. I have taken a fancy to you and you mustn’t be cross. Besides, it’s only my way. Let me tell you my story.”

“What for?”

“That you may know who I am, of course. I may look seedy, but I’m a man worth cultivating. You never heard of such an extraordinary fellow as I am. I have had a career that is simply marvelous. At twelve I was running a printing press in Toronto. The next year I made a fortune off a patent bit, and lost it in a night bucking the tiger. I have been an aeronaut, a telegraph operator, a nabob and a cook. I have followed a dozen trades⁠—some honest, some not. I have engineered companies out of which millions have been made. I have been a miner in Arizona, in Cape Colony, in Peru I had the concession for lighting St. Petersburg with electricity and the charter for trams in Madras. I have handled cargoes of elephant tusks and smuggled opium in books. I have been a three-card monte man on the Pacific slope and led revivals in Maine. The Wandering Jew is nothing to me. I have been everywhere, seen everything, and, though I am sixty years old, I am strong as an ox. With this hundred I shall open a cigar-shop. When I have a thousand to my credit I’ll take a hack at the Street.”

“With what?”

“With my brains, of course. What is there wonderful about speculating with the ready? Thundering guns! give me fifty thousand today and in a month I’ll quadruple it.”

“Or go broke.”

“Not a bit of it. What will you wager I don’t make a million? I am lucky, not a doubt of it, and I have ideas. My head is full of them. Anything suggests them⁠—a tune from a barrel-organ, a sign in a window, a remark overheard and retained, the first paper I pick up; here, for instance⁠—”

And the little man, leaning forward, picked up a newspaper which lay on the table. It was the one from which, a month before, Hugh had taken his pumps and which, with artistic indifference, he had suffered to remain where it fell.

“Thundering guns!”

With the agility of a clown the little man had sprung to his feet, his eyes glued to the paper. His face was always red, but suddenly it had grown bright purple.

“What is the number of this house?” he blurted.

“Seventeen.”

“Tompkins Square?”

Hugh nodded.

“Is there anyone here by the name of Sisseton?”

“Yes,” Hugh answered, blankly astonished. “But why do you ask?”

“Where does he live? Tell me at once.”

“Over there,” Hugh replied, with a gesture. “It was with him I was talking when you came in.”

“Thundering guns!”

With the bound of a panther the little man sprang at the door and vanished downstairs, crossed the court, mounted the other stairway, the paper still in his hand and Hugh at his heels.

“It is here, isn’t it?” he cried, over his shoulder, and burst into the Sisseton parlor.

Jenny was practicing on a typewriter and her father was beating a tattoo on the window, but at the sudden eruption both started and turned.

“Are you Mr. Rufus Sisseton?” the little man gasped. Mr. Sisseton seemed incapable of reply. He looked as though paralysis was claiming him as its own. It was Jenny who answered in his stead.

“In that case,” the little man announced, “my name is John Anderson and I am⁠—”

He had no time to add more; Mr. Sisseton uttered one faint moan, raised his hands and fell into a chair.

Jenny made a dash at him. “Papa, papa!” she cried, “what is it?”

“The end,” he groaned. “Love, matrimony, everything you have dreamed is over.”

Under Jenny’s ministrations, presently he was again on his feet, and motioning to the little man he went with him into the adjoining room.

The two lovers stared for a second into each other’s eyes. On the floor the paper lay. Hugh caught it up, and after a glance at the headlines turned to the advertisements. One of them, which he read aloud, ran as follows:

“The next of kin of Humphery Anderson, who died the 10th of June, 1880, will learn something to their advantage by addressing Mr. Rufus Sisseton, 17 Tompkins Square.”