The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 6/Number 11/A Witch City Mystery
A Witch City Mystery.[1]
by Frederic Van Rensselaer Dey.
Jacob Hawksley, the last of his line, had no assistant and rarely a customer, and, indeed, none but strangers dared to enter his low-ceiled, dingy shop in the early "thirties," when superstition was not so veiled as now, for rumor had woven a web of weirdest horror about the old man and his habitation. Not that he was so very old—three score, perhaps, with a smooth, benignant face, and a shrewd smile for those who feared him most. But tradesmen served him only because they dared not refuse, children fled from him, and strangers, who were mostly mariners, were warned to give his shop a roomy berth.
If but half the wonders related of the round-shouldered, studious-looking little man had been true, they were enough to account for the horror in which he was held, while their foundation on facts was undeniable. Some people said, if any living thing crossed his threshold, it never re-appeared. The grocer opposite, who served the chemist with trembling, told of scores of stray cats and dogs enticed into Hawksley's shop, but they were always homeless, miserable creatures. Ill-natured persons hinted that the old man ate the captured animals, though the butcher declared that Hawksley bought the best of beef and mutton. The charitable argued that the brutes were killed to release them from misery, but immediate neighbors shook their heads at this suggestion, for they remembered many nights—usually wild and stormy—when strange noises of barking and growling dogs, and still more inexplicable animal sounds, came from behind the chemist's door. Never a sign of anything of the kind was heard or seen by day, however, and if the weather permitted, the shop door stood well ajar, while the windows and curtains of the single story above were wide to the world, and canaries sang merrily there in their cages.
Sometimes screaming parrots or frolicsome squirrels took the place of the canaries, and altogether it might have been thought that Hawksley possessed a miniature menagerie but for the fact of lack of space. There were certainly no animals in the upper story, nor room for so many in the cellar as had been traced to the premises, to say nothing of long periods of unbroken silence, so the generally accepted belief made Hawksley a magician, at whose command birds and beasts appeared and disappeared.
Such benevolent actions as were sometimes reported of Hawksley were also attributed to his magical powers. On one occasion, when a friendless child was knocked down by a horse and taken up with a broken leg, it was the old chemist who bore the little sufferer tenderly away, closed the shop door in the faces of a gaping crowd, afraid to enter, and told them that he would care for and cure the foundling. The very next day the lad came forth completely sound and well, without a scar to tell of the fracture of a limb. Again, an old cripple, bent with rheumatism—a stranger in Salem—stopped to ask alms of the chemist. He entered without fear, and twenty-four hours later departed, erect and agile.
The neighbors called these cures sorcery. The rheumatic beggar could tell nothing of his cure, except that Hawksley had given him something to drink, and that presently he awoke from sleep to find himself free from shooting pains, and well and young again in his feelings. He did not know from his own consciousness whether the cure had taken an hour, a day or a year. He oniy knew that he was cured and could work instead of beg.
About this time came the crowning mystery. Salem then enjoyed a maritime commerce that rivalled that of any New England port, and the captain of a clipper in the Liverpool trade was seen to enter the mysterious chemist’s shop, but, though watched, was not observed to go out again. Higham, the grocer, who knew Captain Simpson and his son very well, saw the captain call upon Hawksley, noticed that they seemed acquainted, and perceived that they had some sort of dispute, though neither the low tones of the chemist nor the captain’s loud and angry epithets gave a clue to the matter under controversy. Hawksley, he noted, wore his wonted calm. While the grocer still watched, the door suddenly closed, and the voices could no longer be heard. An hour later, watching with unrelaxed vigilance, Higham saw Hawksley reopen the door, stand smiling a few moments on the threshold, and then, leaving the door ajar, walk deliberately down the street. But still the captain did not come out.
The tradesman was puzzled, but continued to watch, even after Hawksley returned. Then he called one of his clerks to relieve him, and all through that day and the following night the door of the chemist's shop was under observation; but Captain Simpson did not appear. There was no other means of egress from the building, and Higham, still leaving a watching assistant, and believing that a crime had been committed, went at noon to Captain Simpson's ship and told his story to Burke Simpson, the captain's son and first mate.
What follows of this strange tale is told in the words of Burke Simpson, as he wrote it down afterwards:
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I was beginning to think it strange that the old man did not came back to the ship when Mark Higham, the chandler, came and told me that father had gone into Hawksley’s chemist shop the day before and had never come out, so I cleared for the scene at once. A hand was still on watch at Higham’s and reported no sail; the old man had not yet got under way.
I crossed the street alone, for neither Higham nor his clerk would go. I knew that Hawksley and my father had been friendly in their younger days, before something—I know not what—had come between them, yet I was surprised that father should go into a place with such a bad name. Though I believed Higham's story, I did not then believe that anything serious had happened. Hawksley looked unlike a murderer.
"I believe you know my father, Captain Simpson?" I said.
"I have known him since we were boys," replied Hawksley. "What can I do for his son?"
"You can tell me where my father is."
"I am sorry I cannot oblige you," he answered calmly. "The captain was here yesterday, shortly after noon. I have not seen him since."
"He left here, then?"
"That would seem to be the logical inference from the fact I have stated. We were together half an hour—possibly an hour—and I have not set eyes on him since."
Then I told the chemist the whole of Higham’s story, and how his door had been watched from the moment of my father's entrance, and I added:
"I know there was bad blood between you, and I am going to find out, in some way, what you know about his disappearance."
He looked at me curiously, without replying. I can only compare his expression to that of a cat watching a disabled mouse that tries to crawl away. At the same time he endeavored to get between me and the door, but I was looking for such a move, and headed him off.
"None of that!" I said. "You can't close any hatches while I'm aboard. Now, then, where’s the old man?"
He shrugged his shoulders, but kept his hungry eyes upon me. I had to repeat my question.
"I'm sorry I can't tell you," was all he said.
There wasn't a thing I could do, but there was one thing more I could say, and as I said it I watched him closely:
"If anything has happened to my father in this house, you'll regret it. I'll have the watch kept up, and if the old man doesn’t turn up on board ship by morning, your den shall be searched, from cellar to garret."
Well, the captain did not turn up by morning, and a close watch of the chemist's shop had shown nothing out of the ordinary. So I went to the city marshal, and induced him and his constables to make a thorough search of Hawksley’s place, but not a sign of a living thing, except Hawksley himself, was to be seen. The upper story was just a comfortable living place. The shop was just as it had looked for years. The cellar was full of casks, with movable lids, each containing liquid. Hawksley warned us not to put a finger into one of them, on pain of fearful burning. This made me suspicious.
"A body might be hid in one of these big casks," I said to the head constable. "Let's dump the whole cargo."
At this Hawksley showed the first sign of fright.
"Would you ruin me by spoiling the labor of a lifetime?" he cried.
"Then give us something to poke into them," I demanded.
He calmed down and fetched an iron rod, with which we stirred up every cask in the cellar, but not one of them contained anything but ill-smelling liquids.
After spending more than two hours in searching, sounding walls, rummaging cupboards and corners and finding nothing, we had to give up. The constables called me a fool and Hawksley's curious neighbors idiots, and I could only vent my own vexation on the grocer and chandler, at whose instigation I had caused the search. Yet, I found him as firm in his belief as ever.
Then I began a systematic search of the city, offered a reward, and did everything anybody could suggest to get a trace of my father, but nothing came of it. We had begun to discharge cargo when he disappeared, and had finished and reloaded, and still he was not heard from. He had sometimes remained away from his ship a few days at a time, but never without leaving word, and I came to the conclusion that he had been waylaid on the docks—a common thing in those days—and been thrown overboard, and that I should never see him again.
So, when sailing day came, and the owners were willing to give me charge of the ship, I had to go. But before we sailed, I had one more visit from Higham.
"Your father never came out of that place again, Burke," he said with the tone of certainty, "and there'll be other disappearances, as sure as you live! Now, I'm going to keep a watch on that shop, night and day, till you get back—and there'll be something to tell."
"What makes you think so?" I asked, his manner was so solemn.
Higham leaned nearer, and said in a low voice:
"Hawksley's well off. His father left him plenty to live on. He hasn't taken in a dollar a week, sometimes, these ten years. Then why does he pretend to keep a shop? I'll tell you. He's experimenting! Sure's you're born, he's experimenting, and he must have something living and moving and breathing to try his devilish tricks upon. That's what I think! At first, cats and dogs and birds would do. Now he wants humans—humans! He's got your father and—mark me—he'll want more! And he'll get 'em!"
I thought it over a minute, and then I said:
"Nonsense! If what you hint is true, there would be some trace of it—and there wasn't one. However, if you'll watch the place, I'll be glad, and bear the expense."
Then the clipper slipped her moorings, and the round voyage took us seventy-five days.
So it was into October before I went ashore in Salem again, and bore away for the chandler's shop. Higham seemed to be expecting me, and was all excitement.
"What did I tell you before you sailed?" he stuttered, the moment we were alone.
I answered his question by another equally eager one:
"Has there been another disappearance?"
Another!" he cried. "Not only another, but four! Think of it, Burke Simpson, five altogether, counting your father. Three last week, and one only last night!"
I was too amazed to speak.
"Let me tell you the whole story," he said. "That place has been watched every minute since you left port, over two months ago, and last night two constables watched with me, and they're convinced at last. The old devil kept quiet as a mouse until last week—probably suspecting that he was watched. But he yielded to temptation at last. Wednesday afternoon a nigger—looked like a cook off'n a coaster—went in, and I'll swear on a stack of Bibles as high as the South Church steeple that he hasn't come out yet! I reported that to the officers, and got laughed at."
I attempted to speak, but Higham broke in:
"Hold on. The very next day, Thursday, a carriage drove up, a gentleman got out and went into Hawksley's and the door closed. I told the driver that if he didn't follow his master immediately, he'd never see him again. He said I was crazy. After he had waited an hour, he went in. Burke, as sure as you're sitting there, neither of them.has come out since!"
"But, good heavens, man—"
"Wait. I ain’t through yet. It was about three o'clock when the coachman entered. After awhile the horses began to stray away, and my errand boy held 'em till about sundown, when I got on the box myself and drove to the watch-house. I brought pretty good proof that time, I guess, and two constables went back with me, and what do you think we saw? There was old Hawksley on his step, picking his teeth for all the world as if he had just eaten the two men! He told the officers that the coachman and his master had been obliged to go away on foot, because some one had stolen the horses! The constables were for quitting at that cool yarn, but I made 'em wait till my watcher cam§ over and swore by all that's holy that not a soul but Hawksley had come out all the afternoon. That gave them something to puzzle over till they concluded to search the place on their own responsibility, Hawksley being willing, and I went in, too. I wanted to see with my own eyes, even if it was the Old Nick himself."
"And you found just what I did?"
"Just that and no more. Hawksley declared that he didn't know who the gentleman was, and nobody was reported missing till last night—Sunday. Then the city marshal sent for me, and set a watch of two of his men in my store, and now I guess he'll do something—after what they saw."
"And what was that?"
"The fifth disappearance! It was a sailor-man. Looked like he might be mate of a blue-water craft. You know that Hawksley, pretending to be a druggist, keeps his shop alight and his door ajar on Sunday evenings, and about half-past nine along came this mate, half-seas over—begging your pardon—and blessed if he didn't turn in to Hawksley’s before we could make a move, and the old spider shut the door on him in a twinkling. I wanted the officers to go right over, but they must needs wait what they called a reasonable time, so it was half an hour before we pounded on the door, which Hawksley promptly opened, picking his teeth, as usual, and smiling his hyena smile. We asked for the sailor.
"'You're quite mistaken, gentlemen," said Hawksley. "No sailor—no customer at all—has come in this evening.'
"Of course, this bare-faced lie made the constables mad, and they went in at once after the man they had seen disappear, while Hawksley smoked a pipe on the doorstep. Well, they found nothing, but their report to the city marshal made him almost as mad as the rest of us. He's promised to do something by ten o'clock this morning—and if he doesn't the citizens will; there's lamp-posts handy. There, Burke, that's the story, up to date."
It was only half-past eight, as you would say ashore, we having made port by dawn, and suddenly I said to Higham:
"Lend me your pistol."
"Don't do it, Burke," he said, "don't go in there alone!"
But I was determined, and he let me have the pistol, and I crossed the street, banged the chemist's door behind me, and pocketed the key. Hawksley looked astonished, but not alarmed. When I pointed the pistol at him he even smiled, but he said nothing.
I was feeling ugly, and meant every word when I said: "Hawksley, if you don't within ten seconds tell what's become of these people, and especially my father, I'll shoot you dead, and take the consequences!"
"I wouldn't," he answered, calm as a summer sea.
"Why not?"
"Because you would be a murderer."
"It's no murder to kill a shark," I retorted.
"Ah, but your bullet would take five lives besides my own, including your father's!"
I felt obliged to lean against the locked door.
"Then he's alive?" I exclaimed.
Hawksley shrugged his shoulders and thrust his hands out palms upward, like a slop-shop clothier. I was about to repeat the question, when he said:
"I think, Burke Simpson, that this affair has gone quite far enough. I had determined to explain this morning, and I would like to do so to you first. You may trust me. Put up your pistol—I will not harm you. I never harmed any living thing—never—and I will do the world untold good with the greatest discovery it has ever known. Come with me; you shall be my assistant!"
He rubbed his hands joyously as he talked, and though I thought him crazy, I believed him harmless when watched; and so, with the pistol in easy reach, I followed him to the cellar.
Near the centre of the floor was half of a whaler's water cask that I remembered having seen there before, but I was surprised when the old man proceeded to dust it out very carefully with a silk handkerchief. Then he surprised me much more by pointing to another smaller cask, and saying coolly:
"Simpson, your father is in there."
I jumped to choke the lie in his throat, reaching for my pistol, but he eluded me, and panting, but calmly as ever, gasped:
"If you injure me you may lose your father. He's alive now, and well—better than he has been since boyhood. You'll thank me for this—though I've kept him longer than I meant to."
"In heaven's name—" I started to say, and stopped. The man was as mad as a hatter.
"Wait; be calm; you shall see. Here, I need your help with this cask. We must pour its contents into the large one I have just dusted. But don't spill the least drop. It might be a finger or a toe, or even an eye. One cannot tell. And don't let the liquid touch you; it would injure you. Easy, now, lift together."
Though I was sure he was as crazy as a loon, I thought it best to humor him, and we gently decanted the contents of the cask into the tub, to the last dregs. Then he fetched a tin dipperful of liquid from a barrel that stood just a bit away from the wall. I watched carefully, while he seemed to forget my presence as he poured the contents of the dipper into the huge tub—one so large that a man might lie at length in it.
The mixture produced a marvellous effect. The liquid began to boil and seethe and whirl as if stirred by a mighty hand. In amazement I soon discerned a floating substance that gradually took shape, though the whirl was so rapid that I could not define it, and then, with a swiftness that the eye could not follow, and in a manner impossible to describe exactly, the whirling motion ceased as the whole contents of the tub seemed to leap together. And there before me, lying on the bottom of a perfectly dry tub, was the body of my father.
I blinked my eyes and looked again—but there was no mistake. The miracle was a fact, and my father was alive and breathing regularly. Hawksley pushed me aside till he had felt the old man's pulse. Then he bade me help him lift the captain out and carry him up stairs.
"When I awaken him, do not tell him what you know; let me do the talking. Heavy, isn't he? Better flesh and better health than he's had for many a year—it's perfect now."
Astonishment kept me silent. We placed him in a chair in the shop, and Hawksley put on his clothes, hidden in a most ingenious locker, and held a vial to his nose. Presently he opened his eyes.
"Hello, Burke!" he exclaimed. "When did you come in? I must have had a long nap, Hawks. Devilish fine one, though, for I feel like a new man. Hawksley's remedies beat the world. He said he'd cure my rheumatism if I'd take his medicine, and damned if he hasn't. Hello! What's all that row?"
It was, as I expected, Higham, alarmed at my long absence, backed by a crowd. I showed my face at the glazed and curtained upper panel of the door, and told them to wait.
When father had stretched his limbs a bit, he helped us, in the same wondering way I had done, to bring to life the four other men confined in casks in the cellar, and when the city marshal and his men came at ten o'clock to make their search they not only found all whom they sought, but those persons assured them that they had come to Hawksley's and remained of their own free will, in order to be cured of their ills. So there was naught for the officers to do but go with the healed, when they departed; all save my father, who remained with Higham and myself to hear the wonderful tale which Jacob Hawksley had to tell.
"Of course, you think you have witnessed a miracle," he began, "but it was really done in accordance with nature's—and therefore God's—simplest laws, though it has taken generations to discover them. Many generations ago one of my ancestors began the work, so all the credit does not belong to me. I have only completed the task bequeathed from father to son through two centuries. But you comprehend the result—man's complete triumph over disease by this process of dissolution aad rehabilitation. The foundation was my ancestor’s discovery that every substance—iron, gold, or any metal, flesh, bone, gristle, etc.,—may be dissolved by some chemical or combination of chemicals, and his inference was that a universal solvent might by their combination, be discovered. He did not succeed, nor his son nor grandson, but four generations back that much was accomplished—the solvent was achieved, but the effort to restore the dissolved substances to their original state always failed. If a combination of metals was dissolved, the restorative fluid gave back no alloy, but the separate metals. If an organic substance—that is, vegetable or animal matter—was put in the solution, it could be restored, but unorganized—a chaotic mass of tissues.
"My grandfather made the next step forward, and his restoring chemical not only gave back iron for iron, but brass—which is an alloy—for brass, bronze for bronze, spelter for spelter, and so on. But when he dissolved an animal—say a sickly cat—he only recovered a great quantity of separate particles, though analysis showed that they contained every substance that the live cat had contained.
"My father—doubtless the greatest chemist that ever lived—left little for me to do, for he succeeded where his ancestors had failed, and the fluid which he devised would restore a dissolved animal to its original size and shape. Unfortunately, the restored cat, dog or guinea-pig was always dead. He worked to remedy this fault, on the natural supposition that it lay with the dissolving fluid, the invention of his predecessor. When I took up the labor independently after his death—having been his assistant for years—I did so on the hypothesis, which proved to be correct, that the imperfection was in my father's restorative fluid. It came to me as a revelation one day that, on principles which we had again and again proved to be true, the potentiality of life was still present up to the moment when the Restorative was mixed with the dissolved being, and that death therefore was caused by the restoring agent.
"It is twenty yearn since I experienced that conviction, and it has taken that score of summers and winters to find the complete remedy. You are eye-witnesses of its success, but you are not chemists nor physiologists, so it would do no good to explain to you in the language of science all the details of the glorious process which will be such a blessed boon to humanity, and which I shall immediately publish to the world. The result has even exceeded my highest expectations. For example, Captain Simpson, suppose that the cask in which you have lived for nearly three months could, with its contents, have been preserved, sealed from the air, a thousand years—which is perfectly possible—and that at the end of that time some one possessing my secret should apply the Restorative, you would awaken as you did an hour ago, full of life and energy, not a day older, and utterly unconscious of the ten centuries of sleep! How would you like to be dissolved again, and try it?"
My father shuddered, but we all laughed when he said drily:
"Thank you. I'd rather take my chances on the broad Atlantic than in one of your casks. That fellow, due in a thousand years, might not keep the appointment, you see."
"I shall not soon forget my own feelings the first time I took courage enough to try my discovery on a human being," continued Hawksley. "You can well imagine them. If I failed, I should differ from a murderer only in intention, and not at all in the eyes of the world. Fate brought a drunken sailor to my doorstep with a broken arm. I dragged him inside, gave him a sleeping potion, worked rapidly while my daring spirit prevailed, and let the man go again within twenty-four hours, whole and well, and never knowing that his arm had been broken. You can see how that success emboldened me. I have practised on many that even my friend Higham did not know about. Then, Captain, you came, and told me about your rheumatism, and I judged that at your age a long rest in solution would be beneficial. You are all beginning to understand the whole tiling now, but friend Higham, who has interested himself so much in the matter, has not yet seen the operation. Come to the cellar, where I have still a fine Newfoundland dog dissolved, and I will bring him to life for you, Burke, for a present."
All notions of witchcraft blown to leeward by Hawksley's sensible talk, Higham followed us eagerly, and witnessed with bulging eyes the re-embodiment of the great dog. No sooner had the animal sniffed from Hawksley's vial than he leaped to the floor, wagging his tail.
As I patted the pet thus strangely bestowed upon me, the old chemist watched me with an inquiring look.
"Have you faith and courage enough now to do something to please me?" he finally said.
Hawksley laughed the first hearty laugh I had ever heard him utter in the dozen years I had known him by sight, when I said emphatically:
"If it is to submit to your process, I certainly have not!"
"Oh, no, not that," he answered lightly and cheerfully. "On the contrary, I wish myself to submit to it, and I want you to be the operator. You have proved to be a man of firmness, nerve and sense. I have overworked myself in this concentrated study, and I need renovation to do the important work of assuring my discovery to the whole world. Besides, none of you have seen the dissolving process. Come, be our chemist."
I still hesitated, but he continued eagerly:
"Though I am not young, my constitution is exceptionally sound, and I shall need but a couple of hours in solution. I will administer to myself the drug that causes unconsciousness, and lie at length at the bottom of this great tub. When I am fast asleep pour over me three pailfuls of the liquid in yonder yellow cask. You may watch me dissolve, or cover the tub with this tarpaulin. In from fifteen to thirty minutes I shall be completely dissolved. Counting from that time, wait in the shop for two hours. Then, from that cask, which you have seen me use several times, pour one dipperful, just as you have seen me do. Then you have only to hold this vial to my nostrils till I open my eyes. It is all very simple. You will do it, won't you?"
"We'll do it, certainly," spoke up Higham, who entered into the matter mightily, and I uttered no dissent.
Hawksley peered into the cask of Restorative.
"Enough for a dozen small men like me," he said, "but it's getting low."
The goblet of medicine to put him to sleep he fetched from the shop, and when all was ready, and he lay in the big vat, he drank it off and almost immediately lost consciousness, as we could plainly see. Then we proceeded as he had directed, drawing the tarpaulin over the tub, for none of us cared to watch. While we silently waited in the cellar for the passing of a full half hour our hearts beat anxiously—I know mine did—and we were in such a state as to shrink unnerved when, with a loud bark and ponderous rush, the Newfoundland dog dashed among us, pursuing a rat. We leaped aside, and I tried to stop the brute, but he dodged me, and as the rat slid in between the Restorative cask and the cellar wall the great beast followed, like a stone shot from a catapult, upsetting the cask, which was but half full and therefore quite light. It was all over in a moment.
Stupefied with amazement and horror, we stood there and saw the last of the priceless liquid vanish, spilled beyond redemption—soaking into the rotting boards of the cellar floor! My father was the first to recover the power of motion. He sprang to the tub and snatched away the tarpaulin. Nothing but a milky-looking fluid met our eyes. Hawksley had disappeared.
With shaking steps and trembling voices we left that awful place, followed by the dog. We left it just as it was—never to return—but in the upper shop we swore an oath of eternal secrecy.
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Here the statement of Burke Simpson stopped, but old newspapers and records show that on that very night Hawksley's shop was burned to a charred framework, and that his opposite neighbor, Henry Higham, the grocer, was supposed to have been its incendiary, in a fit of insanity from which he never recovered.
- ↑ Copyright, 1901, by The Shortstory Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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