PUNCHINELLO

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD, By ORPHEUS C. KERR, Continued in this Number.

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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by the PUNCHINELLO PUBLISHING COMPANY, in the Clerk's Office
of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York.

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD:

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.

CHAPTER XVI.

AVUNCULAR DEVOTIO

Having literally fallen asleep from his chair to the rug, J. BUMSTEAD, Esquire, was found to have reached such an extraordinary depth in slumber, that Mr. and Mrs. SMYTHE, his landlord and landlady, who were promptly called in by Mr. DIBBLE, had at first some fear that they should never be able to drag him out again. In pursuance, however, of a mode of treatment commended to their judgment, by frequent previous practice with the same patient, the good couple poured a pitcher of water over his fallen head; hauled him smartly up and down the room, first by a hand and then by a foot; singed his whiskers with a hot poker, held him head-downward for a time, and tried various other approved allopathic remedies. Seeing that he still slept profoundly, though appearing, by occasional movements of his arms, to entertain certain passing dreams of single combats, the quick womanly wit of Mrs. SMYTHE finally hit upon the homoeopathic expedient of softly shaking his familiar antique flask at his right ear. Scarcely had the soft, liquid sound therefrom resulting been addressed for a minute to the auricular orifice, when a singularly pleasing smile wreathed the countenance of the Ritualistic organist, his eyelids flew up like the spring-covers of two valuable hunting-case watches, and he suddenly arose to a sitting position upon the rug and began feeling around for the bed-clothes.

"There!" cried Mrs. SMYTHE, greatly affected by his pathetic expression of countenance, "you're all right now, sir. How worn-out you must have been, to sleep so!"

"Do you always go to sleep with such alarming suddenness?" asked Mr. DIBBLE.

"When I have to go anywhere, I make it a rule to go at once:—similarly, when going to sleep," was the answer. "Excuse me, however, for keeping you waiting, Mr. DIBBLE. We've had quite a rain, sir."

His hair, collar, and shoulders being very wet from the water which had been poured upon him during his slumber, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in his present newly-awake frame of mind, believed that a hard shower had taken place, and thereupon turned moody.

"We've had quite a rain, sir, since I saw you last," he repeated, gloomily, "and I am freshly reminded of my irreparable loss."

"Such an open, spring-like character!" apostrophized the lawyer, staring reflectively into the grate.

"Always open when it rained, and closing with a spring," said Mr. BUMSTEAD, in soft abstraction lost.

"Who closed with a spring?" queried the elder man, irascibly.

"The umbrella," sobbed JOHN BUMSTEAD.

"I was speaking of your nephew, sir!" was Mr. DIBBLE'S impatient explanation.

Mr. BUMSTEAD stared at him sorrowfully for a moment, and then requested Mrs. SMYTHE to step to a cupboard in the next room and immediately pour him out a bottle of soda-water which she should find there.

"Won't you try some?" he asked the lawyer, rising limply to his feet when the beverage was brought, and drinking it with considerable noise.

"No, thank you," returned Mr. DIBBLE.

"As you please, then," said the organist, resignedly. "Only, if you have a headache don't blame me. (Mr. and Mrs. SMYTHE, you may place a few cloves where I can get them, and retire.) What you have told me, Mr. DIBBLE, concerning the breaking of the engagement between your ward and my nephew, relieves my mind of a load. As a right-thinking man, I can no longer suspect you of having killed EDWIN DROOD."

"Suspect ME?" screamed the aged lawyer, almost leaping into the air.

"Calm yourself," observed Mr. BUMSTEAD, quietly, the while he ate a sedative clove. "I say that I can not longer suspect you. I can not think that a person of your age would wantonly destroy a human life merely to obtain an umbrella."

Absolutely purple in the face, Mr. DIBBLE snatched his hat from a chair just as the Ritualistic organist was about to sit upon it, and was on the point of hurrying wrathfully from the room, when the entrance of Gospeler SIMPSON arrested him.

Noting his agitation, Mr. BUMSTEAD instantly resolved to clear him from suspicion in the new-comer's mind also.

"Reverend Sir," he said to the Gospeler, quickly, "in this sad affair we must be just, as well as vigilant I believe Mr. DIBBLE to be as innocent as ourselves. Whatever may be his failings so far as liquor is concerned, I wholly acquit him of all guilty knowledge of my nephew and umbrella."

Too apoplectic with suffocating emotions to speak, Mr. DIBBLE foamed slightly at the month and tore out a lock or two of his hair.

"And I believe that my unhappy pupil, Mr. PENDRAGON, is as guiltless," responded the puzzled Gospeler. "I do not deny that he had a quarrel with Mr. DROOD, in the earlier part of their acquaintance; but, as you, Mr. BUMSTEAD, yourself, admit, their meeting at the Christmas-Eve dinner was amicable; as I firmly believe their last mysterious parting to have been."

The organist raised his fine head from the shadow of his right hand, in which it had rested for a moment, and said, gravely: "I cannot deny, gentlemen, that I have had my terrible distrusts of you all. Even now, while, in my deepest heart, I release Mr. DIBBLE and Mr. PENDRAGON from all suspicion, I cannot entirely rid my mind of the impression that you, Mr. SIMPSON, in an hour when, from undue indulgence in stimulants, you were not wholly yourself, may have been tempted, by the superior fineness of the alpaca, to slay a young man inexpressibly dear to us all."

"Great heavens, Mr. BUMSTEAD!" panted the Gospeler, livid with horror, "I never—"

—"Not a word, sir!" interrupted the Ritualistic