Storytelling. The terrible Solomons and other stories

© Yu. Belochkina, compiling, 2021

© O. Huhalova-Mieshkova, graphic artist, 2021

© Folio Publishing House, brand series, 2020

A dilemma

by S. Weir Mitchell

I was just thirty-seven when my Uncle Philip died. A week before that event he sent for me; and here let me say that I had never set eyes on him. He hated my mother, but I do not know why. She told me long before his last illness that I need expect nothing from my father’s brother. He was an inventor, an able and ingenious mechanical engineer, and had made much money by his improvement in turbine-wheels. He was a bachelor; lived alone, cooked his own meals, and collected precious stones, especially rubies and pearls. From the time he made his first money he had this mania. As he grew richer, the desire to possess rare and costly gems became stronger. When he bought a new stone, he carried it in his pocket for a month and now and then took it out and looked at it. Then it was added to the collection in his safe at the trust company.

At the time he sent for me I was a clerk, and poor enough. Remembering my mother’s words, his message gave me, his sole relative, no new hopes; but I thought it best to go.

When I sat down by his bedside, he began, with a malicious grin:

“I suppose you think me queer. I will explain.” What he said was certainly queer enough. “I have been living on an annuity into which I put my fortune. In other words, I have been, as to money, concentric half of my life to enable me to be as eccentric as I pleased the rest of it. Now I repent of my wickedness to you all, and desire to live in the memory of at least one of my family. You think I am poor and have only my annuity. You will be profitably surprised. I have never parted with my precious stones; they will be yours. You are my sole heir. I shall carry with me to the other world the satisfaction of making one man happy.

“No doubt you have always had expectations, and I desire that you should continue to expect. My jewels are in my safe. There is nothing else left.”

When I thanked him he grinned all over his lean face, and said:

“You will have to pay for my funeral.”

I must say that I never looked forward to any expenditure with more pleasure than to what it would cost me to put him away in the earth.

As I rose to go, he said:

“The rubies are valuable. They are in my safe at the trust company. Before you unlock the box, be very careful to read a letter which lies on top of it; and be sure not to shake the box.” I thought this odd.

“Don’t come back. It won’t hasten things.”

He died that day week, and was handsomely buried. The day after, his will was found, leaving me his heir. I opened his safe and found in it nothing but an iron box, evidently of his own making, for he was a skilled workman and very ingenious. The box was heavy and strong, about ten inches long, eight inches wide and ten inches high. On it lay a letter to me. It ran thus:

“Dear Tom: This box contains a large number of very fine pigeon-blood rubies and a fair lot of diamonds; one is blue – a beauty. There are hundreds of pearls – one the famous green pearl and a necklace of blue pearls, for which any woman would sell her soul – or her affections.”

I thought of Susan.

“I wish you to continue to have expectations and continuously to remember your dear uncle. I would have left these stones to some charity, but I hate the poor as much as I hate your mother’s son, – yes, rather more.

The box contains an interesting mechanism, which will act with certainty as you unlock it, and explode ten ounces of my improved, supersensitive dynamite – no, to be accurate, there are only nine and a half ounces. Doubt me, and open it, and you will be blown to atoms. Believe me, and you will continue to nourish expectations which will never be fulfilled. As a considerate man, I counsel extreme care in handling the box. Don’t forget your affectionate

Uncle.”

I stood appalled, the key in my hand. Was it true? Was it a lie? I had spent all my savings on the funeral, and was poorer than ever.

Remembering the old man’s oddity, his malice, his cleverness in mechanic arts, and the patent explosive which had helped to make him rich, I began to feel how very likely it was that he had told the truth in this cruel letter.

I carried the iron box away to my lodgings, set it down with care in a closet, laid the key on it, and locked the closet.

Then I sat down, as yet hopeful, and began to exert my ingenuity upon ways of opening the box without being killed. There must be a way.

After a week of vain thinking I bethought me, one day, that it would be easy to explode the box by unlocking it at a safe distance, and I arranged a plan with wires, which seemed as if it would answer. But when I reflected on what would happen when the dynamite scattered the rubies, I knew that I should be none the richer. For hours at a time I sat looking at that box and handling the key.

At last I hung the key on my watch-guard; but then it occurred to me that it might be lost or stolen. Dreading this, I hid it, fearful that some one might use it to open the box. This state of doubt and fear lasted for weeks, until I became nervous and began to dread that some accident might happen to that box. A burglar might come and boldly carry it away and force it open and find it was a wicked fraud of my uncle’s. Even the rumble and vibration caused by the heavy vans in the street became at last a terror.

Worst of all, my salary was reduced, and I saw that marriage was out of the question.

In my despair I consulted Professor Clinch about my dilemma, and as to some safe way of getting at the rubies. He said that, if my uncle had not lied, there was none that would not ruin the stones, especially the pearls, but that it was a silly tale and altogether incredible. I offered him the biggest ruby if he wished to test his opinion. He did not desire to do so.

Dr. Schaff, my uncle’s doctor, believed the old man’s letter, and added a caution, which was entirely useless, for by this time I was afraid to be in the room with that terrible box.

At last the doctor kindly warned me that I was in danger of losing my mind with too much thought about my rubies. In fact, I did nothing else but contrive wild plans to get at them safely. I spent all my spare hours at one of the great libraries reading about dynamite. Indeed, I talked of it until the library attendants, believing me a lunatic or a dynamite fiend, declined to humor me, and spoke to the police. I suspect that for a while I was “shadowed” as a suspicious, and possibly criminal, character. I gave up the libraries, and, becoming more and more fearful, set my precious box on a down pillow, for fear of its being shaken; for at this time even the absurd possibility of its being disturbed by an earthquake troubled me. I tried to calculate the amount of shake needful to explode my box.

The old doctor, when I saw him again, begged me to give up all thought of the matter, and, as I felt how completely I was the slave of one despotic idea, I tried to take the good advice thus given me.

Unhappily, I found, soon after, between the leaves of my uncle’s Bible, a numbered list of the stones with their cost and much beside. It was dated two years before my uncle’s death. Many of the stones were well known, and their enormous value amazed me.

Several of the rubies were described with care, and curious histories of them were given in detail. One was said to be the famous “Sunset ruby,” which had belonged to the Empress-Queen Maria Theresa. One was called the “Blood ruby,” not, as was explained, because of the color, but on account of the murders it had occasioned. Now, as I read, it seemed again to threaten death.

The pearls were described with care as an unequalled collection. Concerning two of them my uncle had written what I might call biographies, – for, indeed, they seemed to have done much evil and some good. One, a black pearl, was mentioned in an old bill of sale as – She – which seemed queer to me.

It was maddening. Here, guarded by a vision of sudden death, was wealth “beyond the dreams of avarice.” I am not a clever or ingenious man; I know little beyond how to keep a ledger, and so I was, and am, no doubt, absurd about many of my notions as to how to solve this riddle.

At one time I thought of finding a man who would take the risk of unlocking the box, but what right had I to subject any one else to the trial I dared not face? I could easily drop the box from a height somewhere, and if it did not explode could then safely unlock it; but if it did blow up when it fell, good-by to my rubies. Mine, indeed! I was rich, and I was not. I grew thin and morbid, and so miserable that, being a good Catholic, I at last carried my troubles to my father confessor. He thought it simply a cruel jest of my uncle’s, but was not so eager for another world as to be willing to open my box. He, too, counselled me to cease thinking about it. Good heavens! I dreamed about it. Not to think about it was impossible. Neither my own thought nor science nor religion had been able to assist me.

Two years have gone by, and I am one of the richest men in the city, and have no more money than will keep me alive.

Susan said I was half cracked like Uncle Philip, and broke off her engagement. In my despair I have advertised in the “Journal of Science,” and have had absurd schemes sent me by the dozen. At last, as I talked too much about it, the thing became so well known that when I put the horror in a safe, in bank, I was promptly desired to withdraw it. I was in constant fear of burglars, and my landlady gave me notice to leave, because no one would stay in the house with that box. I am now advised to print my story and await advice from the ingenuity of the American mind.

I have moved into the suburbs and hidden the box and changed my name and my occupation. This I did to escape the curiosity of the reporters. I ought to say that when the government officials came to hear of my inheritance, they very reasonably desired to collect the succession tax on my uncle’s estate.

I was delighted to assist them. I told the collector my story, and showed him Uncle Philip’s letter. Then I offered him the key, and asked for time to get half a mile away. That man said he would think it over and come back later.

This is all I have to say. I have made a will and left my rubies and pearls to the Society for the Prevention of Human Vivisection. If any man thinks this account a joke or an invention, let him coldly imagine the situation:

Given an iron box, known to contain wealth, said to contain dynamite, arranged to explode when the key is used to unlock it – what would any sane man do? What would he advise?

The Peterkins snowed-up

by Lucretia P. Hale

Mrs. Peterkin awoke one morning to find a heavy snow-storm raging. The wind had flung the snow against the windows, had heaped it up around the house, and thrown it into huge white drifts over the fields, covering hedges and fences.

Mrs. Peterkin went from one window to the other to look out; but nothing could be seen but the driving storm and the deep white snow. Even Mr. Bromwick’s house, on the opposite side of the street, was hidden by the swift-falling flakes.

“What shall I do about it?” thought Mrs. Peterkin. “No roads cleared out! Of course there’ll be no butcher and no milkman!”

The first thing to be done was to wake up all the family early; for there was enough in the house for breakfast, and there was no knowing when they would have anything more to eat.

It was best to secure the breakfast first.

So she went from one room to the other, as soon as it was light, waking the family, and before long all were dressed and downstairs.

And then all went round the house to see what had happened.

All the water-pipes that there were were frozen. The milk was frozen. They could open the door into the wood-house; but the wood-house door into the yard was banked up with snow; and the front door, and the piazza door, and the side door stuck.

Nobody could get in or out!

Meanwhile, Amanda, the cook, had succeeded in making the kitchen fire, but had discovered there was no furnace coal.

“The furnace coal was to have come to-day,” said Mrs. Peterkin, apologetically.

“Nothing will come to-day,” said Mr. Peterkin, shivering.

But a fire could be made in a stove in the dining-room.

All were glad to sit down to breakfast and hot coffee. The little boys were much pleased to have “ice-cream” for breakfast.

“When we get a little warm,” said Mr. Peterkin, “we will consider what is to be done.”

“I am thankful I ordered the sausages yesterday,” said Mrs. Peterkin. “I was to have had a leg of mutton to-day.”

“Nothing will come to-day,” said Agamemnon, gloomily.

“Are these sausages the last meat in the house?” asked Mr. Peterkin.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Peterkin.

The potatoes also were gone, the barrel of apples empty, and she had meant to order more flour that very day.

“Then we are eating our last provisions,” said Solomon John, helping himself to another sausage.

“I almost wish we had stayed in bed,” said Agamemnon.

“I thought it best to make sure of our breakfast first,” repeated Mrs. Peterkin.

“Shall we literally have nothing left to eat?” asked Mr. Peterkin.

“There’s the pig!” suggested Solomon John.

Yes, happily, the pigsty was at the end of the wood-house, and could be reached under cover.

But some of the family could not eat fresh pork.

“We should have to ‘corn’ part of him,” said Agamemnon.

“My butcher has always told me,” said Mrs. Peterkin, “that if I wanted a ham I must keep a pig. Now we have the pig, but have not the ham!”

“Perhaps we could ‘corn’ one or two of his legs,” suggested one of the little boys.

“We need not settle that now,” said Mr. Peterkin. “At least the pig will keep us from starving.”

The little boys looked serious; they were fond of their pig.

“If we had only decided to keep a cow,” said Mrs. Peterkin.

“Alas! yes,” said Mr. Peterkin, “one learns a great many things too late!”

“Then we might have had ice-cream all the time!” exclaimed the little boys.

Indeed, the little boys, in spite of the prospect of starving, were quite pleasantly excited at the idea of being snowed-up, and hurried through their breakfasts that they might go and try to shovel out a path from one of the doors.

“I ought to know more about the water-pipes,” said Mr. Peterkin. “Now, I shut off the water last night in the bath-room, or else I forgot to; and I ought to have shut it off in the cellar.”

The little boys came back. Such a wind at the front door, they were going to try the side door.

“Another thing I have learned to-day,” said Mr. Peterkin, “is not to have all the doors on one side of the house, because the storm blows the snow against all the doors.”

Solomon John started up.

“Let us see if we are blocked up on the east side of the house!” he exclaimed.

“Of what use,” asked Mr. Peterkin, “since we have no door on the east side?”

“We could cut one,” said Solomon John.

“Yes, we could cut a door,” exclaimed Agamemnon.

“But how can we tell whether there is any snow there?” asked Elizabeth Eliza, – ”for there is no window.”

In fact, the east side of the Peterkins’ house formed a blank wall. The owner had originally planned a little block of semi-detached houses. He had completed only one, very semi and very detached.

“It is not necessary to see,” said Agamemnon, profoundly; “of course, if the storm blows against this side of the house, the house itself must keep the snow from the other side.”

“Yes,” said Solomon John, “there must be a space clear of snow on the east side of the house, and if we could open a way to that”-

“We could open a way to the butcher,” said Mr. Peterkin, promptly.

Agamemnon went for his pickaxe. He had kept one in the house ever since the adventure of the dumb-waiter.

“What part of the wall had we better attack?” asked Mr. Peterkin.

Mrs. Peterkin was alarmed.

“What will Mr. Mudge, the owner of the house, think of it?” she exclaimed. “Have we a right to injure the wall of the house?”

“It is right to preserve ourselves from starving,” said Mr. Peterkin. “The drowning man must snatch at a straw!”

“It is better that he should find his house chopped a little when the thaw comes,” said Elizabeth Eliza, “than that he should find us lying about the house, dead of hunger, upon the floor.”

Mrs. Peterkin was partially convinced.

The little boys came in to warm their hands. They had not succeeded in opening the side door, and were planning trying to open the door from the wood-house to the garden.

“That would be of no use,” said Mrs. Peterkin, “the butcher cannot get into the garden.”

“But we might shovel off the snow,” suggested one of the little boys, “and dig down to some of last year’s onions.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Peterkin, Agamemnon, and Solomon John had been bringing together their carpenter’s tools, and Elizabeth Eliza proposed using a gouge, if they would choose the right spot to begin.

The little boys were delighted with the plan, and hastened to find, – one, a little hatchet, and the other a gimlet. Even Amanda armed herself with a poker.

“It would be better to begin on the ground floor,” said Mr. Peterkin.

“Except that we may meet with a stone foundation,” said Solomon John.

“If the wall is thinner upstairs,” said Agamemnon, “it will do as well to cut a window as a door, and haul up anything the butcher may bring below in his cart.”

Everybody began to pound a little on the wall to find a favorable place, and there was a great deal of noise. The little boys actually cut a bit out of the plastering with their hatchet and gimlet. Solomon John confided to Elizabeth Eliza that it reminded him of stories of prisoners who cut themselves free, through stone walls, after days and days of secret labor.

Mrs. Peterkin, even, had come with a pair of tongs in her hand. She was interrupted by a voice behind her.

“Here’s your leg of mutton, marm!”

It was the butcher. How had he got in?

“Excuse me, marm, for coming in at the side door, but the back gate is kinder blocked up. You were making such a pounding I could not make anybody hear me knock at the side door.”

“But how did you make a path to the door?” asked Mr. Peterkin. “You must have been working at it a long time. It must be near noon now.”

“I’m about on regular time,” answered the butcher. “The town team has cleared out the high road, and the wind has been down the last half-hour. The storm is over.”

True enough! The Peterkins had been so busy inside the house they had not noticed the ceasing of the storm outside.

“And we were all up an hour earlier than usual,” said Mr. Peterkin, when the butcher left. He had not explained to the butcher why he had a pickaxe in his hand.

“If we had lain abed till the usual time,” said Solomon John, “we should have been all right.”

“For here is the milkman!” said Elizabeth Eliza, as a knock was now heard at the side door.

“It is a good thing to learn,” said Mr. Peterkin, “not to get up any earlier than is necessary.”

Mrs. Packletide’s tiger

by Saki

It was Mrs. Packletide’s pleasure and intention that she should shoot a tiger. Not that the lust to kill had suddenly descended on her, or that she felt that she would leave India safer and more wholesome than she had found it, with one fraction less of wild beast per million of inhabitants. The compelling motive for her sudden deviation towards the footsteps of Nimrod was the fact that Loona Bimberton had recently been carried eleven miles in an aeroplane by an Algerian aviator, and talked of nothing else; only a personally procured tiger-skin and a heavy harvest of Press photographs could successfully counter that sort of thing. Mrs. Packletide had already arranged in her mind the lunch she would give at her house in Curzon Street, ostensibly in LoonaBimberton’shonour, with a tiger-skin rug occupying most of the foreground and all of the conversation. She had also already designed in her mind the tiger-claw brooch that she was going to give Loona Bimberton on her next birthday. In a world that is supposed to be chiefly swayed by hunger and by love Mrs. Packletide was an exception; her movements and motives were largely governed by dislike of Loona Bimberton.

Circumstances proved propitious. Mrs. Packletide had offered a thousand rupees for the opportunity of shooting a tiger without overmuch risk or exertion, and it so happened that a neighbouring village could boast of being the favoured rendezvous of an animal of respectable antecedents, which had been driven by the increasing infirmities of age to abandon game-killing and confine its appetite to the smaller domestic animals. The prospect of earning the thousand rupees had stimulated the sporting and commercial instinct of the villagers; children were posted night and day on the outskirts of the local jungle to head the tiger back in the unlikely event of his attempting to roam away to fresh hunting-grounds, and the cheaper kinds of goats were left about with elaborate carelessness to keep him satisfied with his present quarters. The one great anxiety was lest he should die of old age before the date appointed for the memsahib’s shoot. Mothers carrying their babies home through the jungle after the day’s work in the fields hushed their singing lest they might curtail the restful sleep of the venerable herd-robber.

The great night duly arrived, moonlit and cloudless. A platform had been constructed in a comfortable and conveniently placed tree, and thereon crouched Mrs. Packletide and her paid companion, Miss Mebbin. A goat, gifted with a particularly persistent bleat, such as even a partially deaf tiger might be reasonably expected to hear on a still night, was tethered at the correct distance. With an accurately sighted rifle and a thumbnail pack of patience cards the sportswoman awaited the coming of the quarry.

“I suppose we are in some danger?” said Miss Mebbin.

She was not actually nervous about the wild beast, but she had a morbid dread of performing an atom more service than she had been paid for.

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Packletide; “it’s a very old tiger. It couldn’t spring up here even if it wanted to.”

“If it’s an old tiger I think you ought to get it cheaper. A thousand rupees is a lot of money.”

Louisa Mebbin adopted a protective elder-sister attitude towards money in general, irrespective of nationality or denomination. Her energetic intervention had saved many a rouble from dissipating itself in tips in some Moscow hotel, and francs and centimes clung to her instinctively under circumstances which would have driven them headlong from less sympathetic hands. Her speculations as to the market depreciation of tiger remnants were cut short by the appearance on the scene of the animal itself. As soon as it caught sight of the tethered goat it lay flat on the earth, seemingly less from a desire to take advantage of all available cover than for the purpose of snatching a short rest before commencing the grand attack.

“I believe it’s ill,” said Louisa Mebbin, loudly in Hindustani, for the benefit of the village headman, who was in ambush in a neighbouring tree.

“Hush!” said Mrs. Packletide, and at that moment the tiger commenced ambling towards his victim.

“Now, now!” urged Miss Mebbin with some excitement; “if he doesn’t touch the goat we needn’t pay for it.” (The bait was an extra.)

The rifle flashed out with a loud report, and the great tawny beast sprang to one side and then rolled over in the stillness of death. In a moment a crowd of excited natives had swarmed on to the scene, and their shouting speedily carried the glad news to the village, where a thumping of tom-toms took up the chorus of triumph. And their triumph and rejoicing found a ready echo in the heart of Mrs. Packletide; already that luncheon-party in Curzon Street seemed immeasurably nearer.

It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat was in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace of the rifle’s deadly work could be found on the tiger. Evidently the wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by senile decay. Mrs. Packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the beast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore did Mrs. Packletide face the cameras with a light heart, and her pictured fame reached from the pages of the TEXAS WEEKLY SNAPSHOT to the illustrated Monday supplement of the NOVOE VREMYA. As for Loona Bimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was a model of repressed emotions. The luncheon-party she declined; there are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.