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TITLE: A STRANGE DISCOVERY
AUTHOR: CHARLES ROMYN DAKE
EBOOK: E06208 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

A Strange DISCOVERY

By

Charles Romyn Dake

(1889)

HOW WE FOUND DIRK PETERS

The FIRST Chapter

It was once my good fortune to assist in a discovery of some importance
to lovers of literature, and to searchers after the new and wonderful.
As nearly a quarter of a century has since elapsed, and as two others
shared in the discovery, it may seem to the reader strange that the
general public has been kept in ignorance of an event apparently so full
of interest. Yet this silence is quite explicable; for of the three
participants none has heretofore written for publication; and of my two
associates, one is a quiet, retiring man, the other is erratic and
forgetful.

It is also possible that the discovery did not at the time impress
either my companions or myself as having that importance and widespread
interest which I have at last come to believe it really possesses. In
any view of the case, there are reasons, personal to myself, why it was
less my duty than that of either of the others to place on record the
facts of the discovery. Had either of them, in all these years, in ever
so brief a manner, done so, I should have remained forever silent.

The narrative which it is my purpose now to put in written form, I have
at various times briefly or in part related to one and another of my
intimate friends; but they all mistook my facts for fancies, and
good-naturedly complimented me on my story-telling powers--which was
certainty not flattering to my qualifications as an historian.

With this explanation, and this extenuation of what some persons may
think an inexcusable and almost criminal delay, I shall proceed.

In the year 1877 I was compelled by circumstances to visit the States.
At that time, as at the present, my home was near Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
My father, then recently deceased, had left, in course of settlement in
America, business interests involving a considerable pecuniary
investment, of which I hoped a large part might be recovered. My lawyer,
for reasons which seemed to me sufficient, advised that the act of
settlement should not be delegated; and I decided to leave at once for
the United States. Ten days later I reached New York, where I remained
for a day or two and then proceeded westward. In St. Louis I met some of
the persons interested in my business. There the whole transaction took
such form that a final settlement depended wholly upon the agreement
between a certain man and myself; but, fortunately for the fate of this
narrative, the man was not in St. Louis. He was one of those wealthy
so-called "kings" which abound in America--in this case a "coal king." I
was told that he possessed a really palatial residence in St.
Louis--where he _did not_ dwell; and a less pretentious dwelling
directly in the coal-fields, where, for the most of his time, he _did_
reside. I crossed the Mississippi River into Southern Illinois, and very
soon found him. He was a plain, honest business man; we did not split
hairs, and within a week I had in my pocket London exchange for
something like L20,000, he had in his pocket a transfer of my interest
in certain coal-fields and a certain railroad, and we were both
satisfied.

And now, having explained how I came to be in surroundings to me so
strange, any further mention of business, or of money interests, shall
not, in the course of this narrative, again appear.

I had arrived at the town of Bellevue, in Southern Illinois, on a bright
June morning, and housed myself in an old-fashioned, four-story brick
hotel, the Loomis House, in which the proprietor, a portly, ruddy-faced,
trumpet-voiced man, assigned to me an apartment--a spacious corner
room, with three windows looking upon the main thoroughfare and two upon
a side street, and a smaller room adjoining.

[Illustration: _The_ LOOMIS HOUSE.]

Here, even before the time came when I might have returned to England
had I so desired, I acquired quite a home-like feeling. The first two
days of my stay, as I had travelled rapidly and was somewhat wearied, I
allotted to rest, and left my room for little else than the customary
tri-daily visits to the _table d'hote_.

During these first two days I made many observations from my windows,
and asked numberless questions of the bell-boy. I learned that a certain
old, rambling, two-story building directly across the side street was
the hotel mentioned by Dickens in his "American Notes," and in the lower
passage-way of which he met the Scotch phrenologist, "Doctor Crocus."
The bell-boy whom I have mentioned was the factotum of the Loomis House,
being, in an emergency, hack-driver, porter, runner--all by turns, and
nothing long at a time. He was a quaint genius, named Arthur; and his
position, on the whole, was somewhat more elevated than that of our
English "Boots." During these two days I became quite an expert in the
invention of immediate personal wants; for, as I continued my studies of
local life from the windows of my apartment, I frequently desired
information, and would then ring my bell, hoping that Arthur would be
the person to respond, as he usually was. He was an extremely profane
youth, but profane in a quiet, drawling, matter-of-fact manner. He was
frequently semi-intoxicated by noon, and sometimes quite inarticulate by
9 P.M.; but I never saw him with his bodily equilibrium seriously
impaired--in plainer words, I never saw him stagger. He openly confessed
to a weakness for an occasional glass, but would have repelled with
scorn, perhaps with blows, an insinuation attributing to him excess in
that direction. True, he referred to times in his life when he had been
"caught"--meaning that the circumstances were on those occasions such as
to preclude any successful denial of intoxication; but these occasions,
it was implied, dated back to the period of his giddy youth.

With little to occupy my mind (I had the St. Louis dailies, one of which
was the best newspaper--excepting, of course, our _Times_--that I have
ever read; but my trunks did not arrive until a day or two later, and I
was without my favorite books), I became really interested in studying
the persons whom I saw passing and repassing the hotel, or stopping to
converse on the opposite street-corners; and after forming surmises
concerning those of them who most interested me, I would ask Arthur who
they were, and then compare with my own opinions the truth as furnished
by him.

There was a quiet, well-dressed young man, who three or four times each
day passed along the side street. Regarding him, I had formed and
altered my opinion several times; but I finally determined that he was a
clergyman in recent orders and just come to town. When I asked Arthur
whether I was correct in my surmise, he answered:

"Wrong again--that is, on the fellow's business"--I had not before made
an erroneous surmise; but on the contrary, had shown great penetration
in determining, at a single glance for each of them, two lawyers and a
banker--"Yes, sir, wrong again; and right again, too. His name's Doctor
Bainbridge, and he's fool enough to come here with the town just alive
with other sawbones. He's some kind of a 'pathy doctor, come here to
learn us how to get well on sugar and wind--or pretty near that bad. He
don't give no medicine worth mentionin', he keeps his hoss so fat he
can't trot, and he ain't got no wife to mend his clothes. They say he's
gettin' along, though; and old farmer Vagary's boy that had 'em, told me
he was good on fits--but I don't believe _that_, for the boy had the
worst fit in his life after he told me. The doctor said--so they
tell--as that was jest what he expected, and that he was glad the fit
came so hard, for it show'd the medicine was workin'."

My attention was particularly attracted to a man who daily, in fact
almost hourly, stood at an opposite corner, and who frequently arrived,
or drove away, in a buggy drawn by two rather small, black, spirited
horses. He was a tall, lithe, dark-complexioned man, with black eyes,
rather long black hair, and a full beard; extremely restless, and
constantly moving back and forth. He addressed many passers-by, a fair
proportion of whom stopped to exchange a word with him. In the latter
instance, however, the exchange was scarcely equitable, as he did the
talking, and his remarks, judging by his gestures of head and hand, were
generally emphatic.

One of the apparently favorite positions which he assumed was to throw
an arm around the corner gas-post, and swing his body back and forth,
occasionally, when alone, taking a swing entirely around the post.
Another favorite position was to stand with his fists each boring into
the hollow of his back over the corresponding hip, with his chest and
shoulders thrown well back, and his head erect, looking steadily off
into the distance. With regard to this man's station in life, I took
little credit to myself for a correct guess; for, in addition to other
aids to correct guessing, the store-room on that corner was occupied by
an apothecary. When I asked Arthur whether the man was not a physician,
"Yes, sir," he replied; "physician, surgeon, and obstetrician; George F.
Castleton, A.M., M.D. _He_ ought to get a dry-goods box and a
torch-light, and sell 'Hindoo Bitters' in the Public-square. If you
jest want to die quick, you know where to go to get it. That fellow
salivated me till my teeth can't keep quiet. Oh, he knows it all!
Medicine ain't enough to fill his intellecty. _He_ runs the Government
and declares war to suit himself. 'Moves around a great deal,' you say?
Well, I believe you; but when you see his idees move around you'll quit
sighing about his body. Why, sir, that man in a campaign changes his
politics every day; nobody ever yet caught up with his religion; and
besides, he's a prophet. You jest get back home without touchin' _him_,
if you love me, now, please do."

All of this was said in a quiet, instructive tone, without much show of
feeling even when the teeth were mentioned, and only such emphasis as
has been indicated by my italics. Arthur's advice for me to get home
without "touching" the doctor, I had no intention of following. My
curiosity regarding the man was aroused, and I had determined, if
possible, to know him. So far as one could be influenced from a
third-story window, I was favorably impressed with him. I judged him to
be superlatively erratic, but without an atom of real evil in his being.
I had observed from my window an incident that gave me a glance into the
man's heart. A poor, dilapidated, distressed negro, evidently seeking
help, had come running up to him as he stood near his buggy, at the
corner; and the manner in which he pushed the negro into the buggy,
himself followed, and then started off at a break-neck speed, left no
doubt in my mind that the doctor had a heart as large as the whole
world. Once or twice during the long, warm afternoons, his words came to
me through the open windows. I was aware that his almost preternaturally
bright, quick eyes flashed a glance or two at me as I once or twice
stepped rather close to an open window looking out over the lower
roof-tops beyond; and I felt that he had given me a niche in his mind,
as I had him in mine. I wondered if he had formed mental estimates of my
status, and if so whether he had attempted to corroborate them as did I
mine, through Arthur. Once I heard him say to a small, craven-looking
man, apparently feeble in mind and in body, with red, contracted,
watering eyes, "Yes, sir, if I had been Sam Tilden, the blood in these

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