PUNCHINELLO

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD,

As an Adaptation of the Original English version, was concluded in the last Number. The remaining portion will be continued as Original.

By ORPHEUS C. KERR,

Commencing with Number 30.

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THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SKELETON IS MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET.

Night, spotted with stars, like a black leopard, crouched once more upon Bumsteadville, and her one eye to be seen in profile, the moon, glared upon the helpless place with something of a cat's nocturnal stare of glassy vision for a stupefied mouse. Midnight had come with its twelve tinkling drops more of opiate, to deepen the stupor of all things almost unto death, and still the light shone luridly through the window-curtains of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S room, and still the lonely musician sat stiffly at a dinner-table spread for three, whereof only a goblet, a curious antique black bottle, a bowl of sugar, a saucer of lemon-slices, a decanter of water, and a saucer of cloves appeared to have been used by the solitary diner.

Unconscious that, through the door ajar at his back, a pair of vigilant human orbs were upon him, the ritualistic organist, who was in very low spirits, drew an emaciated and rather unsteady hand repeatedly across his perspiring brow, and talked in deep bass to himself.

"He came in, af'r' bein' brisgly walked up'n-down the turnpike by PENDRAGON, and slammed himself down-'n-that-chair," ran the soliloquy, with a ghostly nod towards an opposite chair, drawn back from the table. "'Inebrious boy!' says I, sternly, 'how-are-y'-now?' He said 'Poorawell;' 'n' wen' down on-er-floor fas'hleep! I w's scan'l'ized.—Whowoonbe?—I took m' umbrella 'n' thrashed 'm with it, remarking 'F'shame! waygup! mis'able boy! 's poorysight-f'r-'nuncle-t' see-'s-nephew-'n-this-p'litical-c'ndit'n.'—H'slep on; 'n' 't last I picked up him, 'n' umbrella, 'n' took 'm out t' some cool place t'shleep't off. Where'd' I take him? Thashwazmarrer—where'd' I leave'm?"

Repeating this question to himself, with an almost frenzied intensity, the gloomy victim of a treacherous memory threw an unearthly stare of bloodshot questioning all over the room, and, after a swaying motion or two of the upper half of his body, pitched forward, with his forehead crashing upon the table. Instantly recovering himself, and starting to rub his head, he as suddenly checked that palliative process by a wild run to his feet and a hideous bellow.

"I r'memb'r, now!" he ejaculated, walking excitedly at a series of obtuse angles all over the apartment. "Got-'t-knockedinto-m'-head-'t-last. Pauper bur'l ground—J. M'GLAUGHLIN. Down'n cellar—cool placefa' man's tight—lef' m' umbrella there by m'stake—go'n' get't thishmin't—"

Managing, after several inaccurate aims at the doorway, to plunge into the adjacent bedroom, he presently reappeared from thence, veering hard-aport, with a lighted lantern in his right hand. Then, circuitously approaching the neglected dining-table, he grasped with his disengaged digits at the antique black bottle, missed it, went all the way around the board before he could stop himself, clutched and missed again, went clear around once more, and finally effected the capture. "Th 'peared t' be two," he muttered, placing the prize in one of his pockets; and, with a triumphant stride, made for the half-open hall-door through which the eyes had been watching him.

The owner of those eyes, and of a surprising head of florid hair, had barely time to draw back into the shadow of the corridor and notice an approaching face like that of one walking in his sleep, when the clove-eater swung disjointedly by him, with jingling lantern, and went fiercely bumping down the stairway. Closely, without sound, followed the watcher, and the two, like man and shadow, went out from the house into the quarry of the moon-eyed black leopard.

Fully bound now in the sinister spell of the spice of the Molucca islands, Mr. BUMSTEAD had regained that condition of his duplex existence to which belonged the disposition he had made of his lethargic nephew and alpaca umbrella on that confused Christmas night; and with such realization of a distinct duality came back to him at least a partial recollection of where he had put the cherished two. Finding Mr. E. DROOD rather overcome by the more festive features of the meal,—notwithstanding his walk at midnight with Mr. PENDRAGON,—he had allowed his avuncular displeasure thereat to betray itself in a threshing administered with the umbrella. Observing that the young man still slept beside the chair from which he fell, he had ultimately, and with the umbrella still under his arm raised the dishevelled nephew head-downward in his arms, and impatiently conveyed him from the heated room and house to the coolest retreat he could think of. There depositing him, and, in his hurry, the umbrella also, to sleep off, under reviving atmospheric influences, the unseemly effect of the evening's banquet, he had gone back on both sides of the road to his boarding-house, and, with his boots upon the pillow, sunk into an instantaneous sleep of unfathomable depth. Dreaming, towards morning, that he was engaging a large boa-constrictor in single combat, and struggling energetically to restrain the ferocious reptile from getting into his boots, he had suddenly awakened, with a crash, upon the floor—to miss his umbrella and nephew, to forget where he had put them, and to fly to Gospeler's Gulch with incoherent charges of larceny and manslaughter. All this he could now vaguely recall, his present psychological condition, or trance-state, being the same as then; and was going entrancedly back to the hiding-place where, with the best of motives, he had forgetfully left the two objects dearest to him in life.

On, then, proceeded the Ritualistic organist in the tawny light of the black leopard's eye: his stealthy follower trailing closely after in the shade of the roadside trees where the star-spotted leopard's black paws were plunged deepest. On he went, in zig-zag profusion of steps and occasional high skips over incidental shadows of branches which he for snakes, until the Pauper Burial Ground was reached, and MCLAUGHLIN'S hidden subterranean retreat therein attained. It was the same weird spot to which he had been brought by Old MORTARITY on the wintry night of their unholy exploring party; and, without appearing to be surprised that the entrance to the excavation was open, he eagerly descended by the rickety step-ladder, and held himself steady by the latter while throwing the light of his lantern around the mouldy walls.

His immediate hiccup, provoked by the dampness of the situation, was answered by a groan, which, instead of being solid, was very hollow; and, as he peered vivaciously forward behind his extended lantern, there advanced from a far corner—O, woeful man! O, thrice unhappy uncle!—the spectral figure of the missing EDWIN DROOD!

After a moment's inspection of the apparition, which